meaning of life

Lucky

There was nothing she was in want of. Enough was her norm. She worked but not for the need of money; only out of boredom and the need for something to do. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to feel the need of necessity or that she didn’t like the satisfying feeling at the end of the month. She simply didn’t need it.

She didn’t take any of this for granted. She was not entitled. She had simply won a lottery she never entered to play. It was as if the world wandered away. It was as if she was sidelined to watch time pass. There was only one thing she wanted and she even got that, if only in bits and bites. It was a dream but it meant handing the lottery winnings over.

Was it fear? Was it sadness?

And so the years went by and she worked passionately without the need to. She never became numb to time or worn out from sameness and the cruel ways of the world. She simply gave up dreams and tried to understand that life was truly short and the she should really consider herself lucky.

Nothing

He sat and thought about the immense size of the universe. It was unfathomable and it made all else meaningless. Everything was simply created, created by us to make ourselves feel as if we mattered. That phrase “as if” echoed in his head.

All those norms, love, responsibility, virtue, knowledge; they all were petty thoughts and worries that filled days and darkened doorways. They were illusions. He understood this. He knew it.

He was a priest, taking vows of celibacy for nothing more that faith. He knew that his worries and his beliefs were for nothing. He knew the whole thing was a charade but for some reason he could not let them go. He clung to them as if they were all that mattered, and in a sense, he was right.

He grabbed at them as if they meant something, greedily devouring the lies like candy. He became obsessed with more; plenty was a lie. He hoarded his thoughts and his things and every once in a while he looked up at the sky filled with stars that were most certainly dead and gone.

Long and Short

Life is long and short. Minutes are measured in seconds, counted off by clocks and we being who we are must have that exactness that comes with the precise mechanizations of machines. And so we pare down the seconds to micro-seconds and beyond, always searching for certainty.

It is, afterall, about certainty.

We have to show that we have control, that we are in control. That we know. That we can. But although our ancestral fur has dropped off we are still apes afraid of our own shadows.

Life is long and short. we are even afraid of the time we have, filling it up with mundane tasks meant to give us meaning in a meaningless world; a world that we have created. We have no reason and so we create one, a reason to validate our existence.

Whatever that reason is does not (in the end matter): gods, money, children, family. It doesn’t matter if we have our heads buried in the minutia of infinity.

Meaning of Life

Life is not magical, but it can be.

There are black holes the size of galaxies and the universe is infinite for all intent purposes. Light years are not only measurements of time but life times, of generations. Far more living things have gone extinct than are living today.

These are thoughts that ought to be comforting if not a little unnerving. But they serve to remind us that life is so much more than a miracle. It is a gift from a watchmaker, but a blind one. The worries that we have are about us, and they are important to us, but not as important as we like to think.

And while many around us are blind as the watchmaker itself to this underlying fact does not mean that we should give up on living a life of happiness and satisfaction. In fact, being happy and satisfied is based on the acceptance that the universe is infinite and meaningless…and we are part of it.