March 19, 2004
-
That’s Life.
The meaning of my life is scrawled out onto one piece of paper.
At a weed induced state of mind, I found the meaning of life… well, for me that is. And I realize that this is entirely a presumptuous statement on my part. I suppose this ties in with my previous entry of “Less Than Ordinary.” This entry may sound more self-righteous than normal… but, I think I’ve figured it out. So hear me out, and give me some of your own thoughts.
There is nothing. But because there is nothing, it is everything. *life is Life.
The Earth has existed for over 3.5 BILLION years. Our human existance is merely a fraction of the Earth’s life. In fact, dinosaurs lived on this planet longer than humans. The dinosaurs eventually went kablooie and mortal lives returned to Earth in the form of neanderthals, rabbits, and manatees. And sorry to break it to y’all… humanity will eventually sputter out – whether by the hands of Bush or natural occurrences. But when the human race ends, something will probably take our place… I’m imagening 7 foot roaches. Anyway, life on this planet will continue with or without us. But the Earth has a life of its own. I won’t even attemot to dip into lives in other galaxies far far away. On second thought, lets just think about that for a moment…. WOW…
Life (an explanation in the macro-sense): Life is everything beyond anything, which makes it nothing. There is no past, present, future… beginning, middle, end… the glass is neither half-full or half-empty… there is no glass. There is only vacancy; there is space within space.
Our individual lives are litreally one grain of sand on Santa Monica beach; a speck of dust in an abandoned wine cellar; a scary looking microscopic creature you see in National Geographic living in your eyebrow. From a purely cynical viewpoint, life is pointless; humanity has no significance. The human constructs of religion is used to give meaning, a sense of validation, a point to life. But there really is nothing; everything we know has been constructed by men. I reiterate… there is nothing… nada… nai.
life (an explanation in the micro-sense): Here’s the uplifting part. There is still a significant importance to life. Our individual existence is important because it’s the only thing we know and try to understand. Our lives are mere vessels used for digesting what Life throws at us: emotions, changes, rotten food. Yet since there is nothing, that means that nothing is everything in regards to our individual, independent lives. For example: in high school I was Homecoming Prince. I got a crown and everything. It was grande… it meant something to me. But when you really thinkg about it and how it fits into the larger picture of Life, it means shit. I might as well been a mollusk wearing a fucking tutu. It means nothing, but wearing that stupid crown constructed by a third-world sweatshop worker meant something to me.
Humanity will always seek something when it’s really nothing. Homosexuals will fight for gay marriages, Christians will continue to evangelize “the word,” Fratboy Greg will try to sleep with as many women as possible……. and all of this means NOTHING to, say, wifebeater Joe Shmoe. Poppycock, in fact… Hmmm, but these nothings are something, if not everything, to many individual lives. Whether if this is “sad” or “beautiful” or both is your call. It’s humanity.
So, in an attempt to make something out of nothing, I made a list of things I want to accomplish in life (I did this at work, and for those who are on the JET program, you are well aware how much time we have on our hands). Here are a few I care to share with you:
1. Positively influence the lives around me.
2. See the Aurora Borealis.
3. Have sex in a gondola (and yes, I’m serious).
This list, according to me, is the meaning of my life. In this life I will seek happiness through what makes me happy. Although it effects how I live my life, human constructs will not tell me how I should live in order to attain happiness. Sure, I gotta work with what I got, but nobody has gotten it entirely right.
As for making sense out of macro-Life, we won’t know the answer until we die… and why think about it? Why ask questions such as “is their life after death” when we will never know the answer in our mortal lives? People can say there’s a heaven and hell… but how the hell do they know that? I guess that’s where faith fits into the picture, but it still means nothing to those who don’t believe in a god. I suppose one can only have an understanding of Life, life, and the lives that surround you.
Conclusion: the life we decide to live is the meaning of Life… but only to our own lives. Yet we are still a part of the bigger scope of Life. This is only a part of what we can do as individuals to understand Life. I can have as much control as I can over my own destiny. If I can’t have control, it’s nothing anyway. The great thing, to a certain degree, is that we have the power to make an event mean something only if we want it to; a level of understanding is necessary to make nothing into something or vice versa.
Um… yeah… so, that’s that. But here’s a question for you: what is the meaning of your own life? What do you want to accomplish before you die? Make a list… it’s fun.
Comments (8)
very Interesting. You get two shiny eprops for this.
*hums theme of “Facts of Life”*
i can say that i agree completely with you about the construct of religion. that is not to say that it is bad but its purpose is to give meaning to life.
additionally. i like manatees. dugongs are cool too.
finally, i dont think sex in a gondola is possible. you must be very creful to evenly distribute your weight throughout the boat to ensure not falling into those canals that are used by the italians as garbage cans. or so ive heard. when you go go to venice, tell me. ill be waiting to hear about your adventures. =D
very interesting. Very borderline existentialism/Samuel Beckett, which I fine very fascinating and true.
I was nominated as one of the top 20 guys for Homecoming court, but I didn’t get it after the final vote! BUT I’M NOT BITTER OR ANYTHING. hehe jk.
Wow, another great post!
Sex in a gondola, hmmm, pretty interesting…
For me I guess my goals are:
1)to love/accept myself completely regardless of any external opinions. sadly, that’s actually really really hard for me.
2) To serve others
3) To find the universal “God” everybody’s been talkin about.
4)To have sex in a gondola…whoa, that’s sooo weird! Isn’t that your goal too?! Dude, mabe we can work something out here…
Can’t wait to see ya…
Devon
Oh! You meant sex in the gondola that floats on water. I was thinking of a ski-lift and that just sounds scary to me since you’re inches from plummeting as it is.
And the meaning of life… I’ve never tripped over this question since I’ve always felt it’s silly to try to answer it. Even if you knew the answer, what would you do? Would you really change your life so it was in agreement with what that answer is?
A question you could ask after thinking about this topic is, Do you believe in predestination? My answer is: sorta. I believe that nothing in life in black and white, so the answer to that question is not yes or no. I believe there is a rough path in life that we’re meant to follow, but there are still some options for us within that path.
I love your point that life means something to us because we assign meaning to it. In the context of our individual lives, a small event can seem earth-shattering. Even the lack of an event can seem disruptive. So if my life means nothing in the grand scheme of things, I don’t really care… it matters to me.
Hi Jason…I hope that I will have as much time to ponder things like the meaning of life as you have when I teach English in Korea. Just wanted to say great entry.
If life, even our own, were truly insignificant unless we deem it significant or others see it as important, then what is really the use of living life? Life before humanity, such as the dinosaurs, never sought meanings in their existence…they never sought and yearned to find out who created them, never probably tried to define morality, what is right and what is wrong (I guess I am asserting that because we have not found evidence otherwise.) The uniqueness that is humanity, I think, makes each individual life meaningful. Each person’s life creates a reaction in another not only in their time and space but beyond that. An ancient Egyptian sketching hieroglyphics on stone that describes a day in the life of an Egyptian has affected us in some way; the aforementioned Egyptian might not have thought his life to be meaningful (he was just doing some accounting or a report on what he did during the day) but somehow, his account completes some bigger picture and gives humanity a past, a present, and even a future. Humans have succeeded in communicating; even differences in language could not stop that. The ancients’ pursuit to finding a creator has led to modern science. So there is that domino effect. I guess I just wanted to say that life, with/without acknowledged significance, is meaningful and vice versa. Perhaps, the meaning of life is helping to complete the bigger picture in some way–to just be there so that humanity can have a past, a present, and a future.
Your thought provoking entry in a way forced me to see what life for me is all about.
I’m not sure what the mathematics of the grains of sand can consider, although — at least in theory — everything is possible and unlimited in the universe, even though the fact of a word suggests an entity, something within some sort of bounds… and English, and the philosophical traditions that have been expressed within English, can’t be bothered with the this-is-universe, this-is-not-universe terminologies, as if everything should have been settled in Sanskrit… But consider: if our sun were a grain of sand, the nearest other star is another grain of sand 50 miles away. The earth’s circumference is, what, about 24,000 miles? And then you think of about 100,000,000 or so stars in our galaxy, which is for sure an undercount since new developments in telescopes never lead to reductions in estimates of numbers of stars but always lead to increases… well, at what point can we start thinking of ourselves as specks of sand? (As if thinking in terms of such numbers is possible/comprehensible anyway…)
The insignificance of my life, I feel, needs to stop seeming like such a surprsing thing, and I need to marvel more at why I see such importance in it. This will lead me, no doubt, to the big H’s (Heiddeger, Husserl, Hume, etc.) and a certain stupor, but that is the way it goes, perhaps.
I like what you’ve written, anyway.
my humanities teacher said out loud to the class last week..
“The meaning of life is to have one.”
yeah.. you define it as you live.