A Facebook friend posted the question—what is the meaning of life—on his wall this past week, wondering about life’s meaning now that he has reached middle-age and started the ‘downhill’ process as he puts it. It was a serious question even though he got some funny non-serious answers as well as a few serious ones. Whether or not one believes in God or in a Universal Spirit, at one point or another in our lives, we are faced with this question--what is the meaning of our unique life on this earth? The question may arise especially during times of personal illness or the illnesses and deaths of loved ones, when the point of life seems futile if death is all that awaits us. We all have or have had days (even weeks) when most of what we do and feel seems so futile and meaningless—jobs that have become routine, daily lives likewise. Life may seem empty of meaning. Even the saints had their struggles with emptiness and feelings of futility so faith in God is no guarantee that life will feel meaningful at all times. It’s a question that cannot really be answered—there is no one right answer that applies to everyone. The only thing we can do is attempt to answer it for ourselves and how we answer it reveals a lot about our personal beliefs and uniqueness. I believe that we were put on this earth to be happy, not in a superficial sense, but in the sense of fulfilling our talents and gifts to the best of our ability, without damaging others or ourselves in the process. The meaning of life may be found in the journey toward that fulfillment. The journey may involve becoming a parent or spouse and focusing on family, or a writer or businessman or teacher or a combination of all those things. And if we manage to live up to our potential then it seems reasonable to me that one might want to help another person or persons along their own paths where needed. For me it is the journey that provides meaning in life because it usually takes a good portion of one’s life to get where one wants to go—to reach one’s goal or goals. So the journey and a lifetime go hand in hand. There has to be a goal, however small, that keeps us going each day-- that gets us out of bed and out the door into the world, happy to be alive, happy to live in the present, happy for another day to make something of ourselves that has little to do with monetary worth. Awareness of our own mortality becomes more pointed as we grow older and helps us live in the present, thankful for the day we have in our hands. For me now it feels like a sense of urgency—not to waste the precious time I have each day.
In this context, it seems a shame to waste too much of a life’s time in front of the TV set. And yet we do at times and that may be the result of an unbalanced daily life. For example, we may work too many long hours at times, become exhausted and not have the energy for much else except to come home, eat a quick dinner and lie on the couch watching TV for the rest of the evening. I’ve done it during different times of my life like so many others. But I find that I cannot watch TV in large doses anymore now that I have reached middle-age. I get restless. The passivity gets to me and makes me frustrated. I want to DO something—be an active participant in my own life. So now I ‘choose' what I want to watch on TV instead of just swapping aimlessly from one channel to the next. It feels better to do it that way—that way I can watch a film (like when I go to the cinema) and still have time to do something else, like write, read, or talk to my spouse or a good friend. Small things, but they give my life meaning. I don’t know if I should be doing more. I didn’t feel as though I could handle more some years ago, but that was because my work was all-consuming. Now it is not as consuming, so now there is more time for other things. New roads have appeared on the horizon, and they are enticing roads because they are unknown and mysterious and may eventually be part of my journey for all I know. But I believe that some of the meaning of life is that what was once mysterious and impenetrable eventually becomes familiar and known to us—revealed to us in stages when we are ready for the revelations.
