The Meaning of Life

More than anything else, people want immortality and money. Unfortunately for the wishful thinkers of the world, one of those things is impossible and the other requires a great deal of skill and luck. So we have to settle for what we've got: one life and a finite set of talents, opportunities, and choices. For those people who can take advantage of their skills and situation, a full and happy life may await. For those who can't, won't, or don't, there's a life (and death) filled with regret, guilt, and general unhappiness.

Writers of inspirational literature, designers of advertising campaigns*, and well-known figures in general are constantly spouting such bits of advice as "live every day to its fullest" and "do something good for the world." One can only assume that the originators of these ubiquitous sentiments were of the regret-and-unhappiness sort. They were likely those who looked back and found that their days were not lived to the fullest, prompting them to remind their children, grandchildren, and the bloke next door not to waste their lives in a cubicle and their money on online poker games. Almost immediately, the fear of an unfulfilled life gripped the public, causing them to do such things as donate to charity and find similar activities that they were told would allow them to get rid of their guilt by making someone else happy. Inspiration-minded folk cackled with glee, having found one more way by which they could manipulate the common man.

This is pure conjecture, of course. But no matter what age he lives in, man (by which I mean man and woman, just to clear that up) wonders why he exists. Is he a puppet of the gods, and is life an opportunity to practice for life after death? Does he exist for the good of others, or is he allowed to be completely self-serving? Or is he, like every other living thing, on this earth for the sole purpose of propagating his race? Oddly enough, man has consigned his fellow animal to the thoughtless life of eating and breeding while raising himself on the pedestal built with the products of his large forebrain and opposable thumbs. He has forgotten that he shares ninety-nine per cent of his genes with creatures that he has deemed not developed enough for thoughts and dreams.

So what constitutes a valuable life? For the humans of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, it's a life that is spent on hard work, with time devoted to leaving a legacy for one's offspring and doing "good deeds" for others. A life spent making oneself happy, we're told, is one that will fill us with regret when viewed with the hindsight of old age. It should seem odd, then, that most of our dreams and wishes involve things that will serve us over others.

What are the things that I hope will make my life valuable, you ask? They're not much different from everyone else's. Some are completely selfish, while some could have residual benefits for the rest of the world. Some will sound cliché, and some will sound weird, but you asked for it.

--I want to have good relationships with my friends and family. I want to be able to count on them for love, support in hard times, and a good laugh in good times. I want them to know that I will do my best to do the same for them. Good relationships with the people in your life who are there for you now and will be there for you in the future is something that really makes life wonderful. Sure, you could live without them, but you'd be lonely and bored.

--I want to be able to help my parents be at peace with themselves, with each other, and with their lives. When my mom and dad divorced two years ago, I felt like the entire foundation on which I had built my life had disappeared from underneath me. This wasn't to say that my parents stopped loving me or that I stopped loving them, it's just that I had lived the previous fifteen years of my life assuming that my family would always be whole. When, all of a sudden, it wasn't, I had no idea what to do with myself. While I have managed to recover, my parents still seem to have minor emotional issues. My father's issues manifest themselves in his frequent baking, and my mother's in her spontaneous trips to South America.** They are both happy doing their own things, and I have little hope that they will reconcile their fundamental differences. However, I want to be able to understand them and help them understand each other, as much for my sake as for theirs. I also want to be able to provide for them, materially and emotionally, whenever and however I need to. I want my dad to be able to retire to the cottage in the English countryside that he's always talked about, and I want my mom to be able to keep gallivanting off to the southern hemisphere as long as she wishes.

--I want to be a pilot. I have loved airplanes since I was very young--I drew them alongside my fairy princesses, begged for toys and models, and dropped whatever I was doing to watch them fly overhead. When I was eleven, my grandfather took me for a ride in his plane, officially kicking off my obsession and giving me a permanent shield against the little-girls-must-like-peaceful-things mindset. For me, flying represents ultimate freedom: from earth, from convention, from gravity. It means being above normal cares--but not all of them, since lack of attention and a disregard for rules may result in a pile of smoking wreckage. This goal isn't something that will benefit humanity, though. The most it could do is make me happy, which could help me do something else to benefit humanity.

--I want to create something amazing. I haven't yet figured out what that amazing thing will be. It could be a work of art that will move grown men to tears. It could be a piece of software so earth-shattering and unique that it will make Sergey Brin and Larry Page smack their foreheads and think, why didn't we hire her as soon as she left college? It could be a building that makes more energy that it consumes, or a bridge that allows people to carpool to work on a different continent. I don't really know the full extent of my capabilities on the creativity front, but I know that I will continue to test my bounds until I have done something that leaves an impact on someone's life, whether he knows it or not. This desire to create something benefits humanity whether it's me doing the creating or not. It is, in my opinion, the second most important factor in the continued advancement of human art, society, and technology (after random accidents)--without people who want to make an impact, the world stops changing.

I would be lying if I said I didn't care about material possessions and financial stability. I would like to be able to live comfortably and provide for a family, if or when I have one. I don't want to have millions to spend on leisure, or even thousands, but I want to be able to do what I love without worrying when my next paycheck will arrive. I also don't want to be dependent on anyone else for financial security-- I want to live on what I earn, not what I'm given. If if earn it doing something I love, then all the better.


*A long-running campaign for Smart Start cereal included the phrase "Carpe Diem: Seize the Day." Parent company Kellogg decided to trademark the phrase, assuming (probably correctly) that the annoyingly chipper lets-have-a-good-start-to-the-morning section of the public would not notice that the term has been around for centuries.

**These aren't bad things, it just means that there are always muffins to be eaten and long slide-shows of bleak landscapes to be watched.