So we finally get to answering the question ...
So it has been a long time since I have posted something. After a long time of doing research, reading different articles and blog posts, I have decided to finalise this post of mine.
So I did my homework and I went around to people I knew, from different backgrounds, and asked them to explain to me "what is the meaning of life?" From doing this, I found something incredible! With all of these answers that I got, it made me think even deeper into what is actually the "meaning of life".
Preperation
Now, I would like you, as the reader, to first take a metaphorical concept into your mind before you continue reading anything else. When you have a small cup, we can only pour so much of water into it before it starts over flooding. Isn’t all the extra water wasted if it keeps filling up after its full? Water is like knowledge and wisdom. This cup is like our mind-set and understanding. Fortunately, the size of this cup can be easily adjusted by ourselves. Having an ignorant perspective about something judged based upon your personal upbringings may cause this cup to become even smaller. I’m not trying to say that we should completely trust everything everyone says within this post, but take an objective standpoint of what each person is saying and follow through to the end.
A diamond has many sides once it has been placed for sale. Each side has a chance to have scratches on them. The perspectives of each person may not be completely true, but it doesn’t leave the core understanding of "what is the meaning of life?" Having an understanding from each person’s perspective can only grow your understanding of the topic and gain a holistic mental picture.
Perspective Thinking
So I am going to start off providing their quote and a bit of a background to who they are as a person. Unfortunately, I will be keeping them anonymous for obvious reasons.
"Well, let me think about it and let me know when you need it. Like as soon as you asked me this question, I realised that I have no defined answer of what the meaning of life is" - R
This is said by an accounting science girl at university level. Quite an adorable short girl that has some really good insights into deep conversations. She comes from an Indian background so there is a lot I could learn from her perspectives of understanding. I was surprised that she got too busy and forgot to get back to me. Oh well … but from what she said, you can see that it really isn’t a simple question to answer or structure for a lot of people. Did I ever mention that I have a thing for short girls? Well, they are quite adorable ^_^
The next quote is by a young adult gentleman that has a doctorate in business information systems and a masters in psychology. He is clever. But all clever people can be weird. Which is why I love his accompany so much. But this is what he said:
"That is a question only you can answer for yourself. Look at animals. What do they do with their lives? Think about cats and dogs? They live life. They do not wait for whatever. They are loyal, playful and sincere. Life in general is meaningless unless you simply live it. Biologists would say the meaning of life is to survive and to reproduce. Philosophers would say either it is meaningless or that you have to find your own meaning. Religious people would say it is to server and to worship. Nobody knows. The universe doesn’t care about life and can go on perfectly well without it. Animals don’t care. They simply live life. So why are you asking me such a difficult question so early in the morning?" - J
So from his words, we can see that different perspective understanding of life will give you different answers. He walks us through really easily by taking our imaginations by the neck and dropping us into the shoes of different "characters" or "creatures" of life; and the most important thing you will notice is that he isn’t much of a morning person :P
The next person I asked was a friend of mine that works in Banking and she is awesome ^_^ We had a weird friendship that consisted a lot with her giving me guidance to experience in life… but we also had those times when we would scroll through 9Gag together to pass time :’D
"Life is what you want it to be … if you want it to be a miracle then it is … if you want it to be beautiful then it is … I just don’t see the need to try give it some sort of definition … because its different for everyone … and just because your life is perfect, doesn’t mean life is a beautiful thing … people are dying of hunger … where is the beauty in that? What can you achieve? It isn’t a thing … not do you know what your path ahead is … so how can you plan a goal or achievement if you don’t even know what will happen in the next 2 minutes? Not if you will even still be alive" - M
From her words, we can see that she is a person that likes to first break you down with whatever you are doing or saying and then slowly smoothen everything back for you. It’s a typical strategy of gaining authority with someone, but if the person cannot stand the first punch, then they don’t get to cherish the message she brings across. In her words, you can also see that we can make it a miracle but it will never be beautifully perfect. Is the question "what is the meaning of life" coming to something useless to you? Has the question of defining the meaning of life concerning now?
Miracles and Destiny
Well, let us start looking into the responses that believe in miracles and destiny. The next one I decided to place is a financial science student that is a really sweet girl who cares a lot about the people surrounding her. She shows a lot of her care by action and chores. If you ask her nicely to do something then she will always do it with 120% and a gorgeous smile and this was her response:
"Hahahaha Deep stuff hay XP well, I’m a Christian so I believe the meaning of life is to live the life the Lord wants me to live, follow His plan and reach the goals He set for me. And that we live so that we can build a relationship with our Lord and learn what plans He has for us and we will see if we are strong enough and faithful enough to stay on His path to reach what He wants for our lives ^_^ all the while teaching others of Him and getting them to start following Him and learn His plan for them. Because the Lords plan is the best for us. We can’t comprehend or dream of what exciting things He has in store for us." – J
From her words, you can see, again, life is beyond our understanding but there is something out there looking out for us.
The next respondent is a soft hearted gentleman with a great compassionate heart. He got bullied by his older brothers when he was young. Strong enough, he fought through his emotional barriers and smiled after this experiences. He currently has a lot of pimples on his face and smiles at you very sincerely. This is his response:
"The meaning of life. Well that’s a touchy subject hay. Hmmm.
To me the meaning of life is probably to stay in heaven with God. And yes, I don’t mean get to heaven, but actually staying in heaven. To elaborate a bit; even though I am Christian, there is a lot of branches of Christianity. In my faith, we believe that heaven is a mind-set. Something you can achieve on Earth. That is in a way you can say that God is basically that ‘good’ inside of us, which also connects you with other people. This state of mind is therefore, a peaceful righteous and loving state. Where you don’t give-in to the anger, crime (bad things) but keep a cool head. I also believe that your body basically determines your souls state. So if I’m angry, then my soul is really not at peace. When you die and your soul leaves your body, then it will stay in the last state that your body was in. Since I don’t want to stay in a state of angry for eternity, I train myself to stay in a peaceful mind-set (Heaven). Oh, and believe me, it’s tough and going in and out of heaven is a daily occurrence. But once you are there, you realise how wonderful it is there and so doing you want others to experience that feeling. Thus you do good onto your fellow human in an attempt to show them the peace there is.
So what do I think is the meaning of life? Well, it’s going through all the ups and downs, losing and gaining friends and families, getting jobs, loosing jobs, being sick, being healthy, etc. that life throws at you and still staying in this peace of mind where you do good onto others and yourself so that you can make someone’s day and by doing that make your own day. If you die somewhere in between then at least you will be at peace for eternity ;)" – J
This gentleman’s perspective starts to make things practical in our lives. What does it mean to be spiritual? He explains it in a very realistic way. Talking about being realistic, our next respondent shows us more of what life is about and how to practically step through some challenges that life teaches us. This lady has a fierce soul. She looks up to her fathers’ achievements and wants to a least match her role model. Having the space to grow, she will always take whatever opportunity comes her way to gain more knowledge. Funny enough, she is a really sweet girl when she cares about you. Taking care of your problems for you and making daily activities feel like an adventure. This is what she said:
"I believe the meaning of life is for us to learn how to not get caught up in things that feed our egos but rather things that feed our souls … so we can come here to learn how to always have the best of intentions and to be the better person every time, and learn how to act not in the way our ego demands but rather in an understanding/ loving/ etc. way … so like: to learn that there are bigger and better things out there than what we allow ourselves to focus on. To learn that "to be at peace" is to not give-in to our ego’s demands. Does that make sense? Like a tiny example would be that if someone is rude to you, your ego will make you feel cross and make you and make you complain about it, but we must learn that all it is, is that that person allows their ego to drive them and so there’s no need to actually be upset, but that we should rather bless them and wish them happiness which is what makes our souls happy too rather than allowing our ego to take control and make us cross" – T
This girl is someone to keep an eye out for. Introspection is an art of many religions such as Confucius, Buddhism, Taoism, Judaism and Christianity, but it isn’t much that can perfect the art of such. She also mentioned that we should be feeding the soul and not the ego. Some people don’t actually believe in souls. Which I can understand your perspective to be honest with you. I generally start out asking my friends "what is it that controls our emotions? Is it only limited to our environment? Or do we have a choice not to get influenced by our environment? Like right now. If you are disagreeing with this statement based on your historical upbringings, then do you have the choice to open up to it? If you do have the choice to open up to these statements, then what is controlling "such" a decision? What is influencing "such" a decision? And from here, I would slowly guide them into understanding that our body is like a vehicle. We use it. It gets old. We need to replace parts. We die. Just like our car. We use it. The car gets old. We need to replace parts. The car dies. It is the soul that is in control of the body and not the body alone.
The next respondent we have is also a believer of miracles. I do believe this lady has a power to create something beautiful in this world. She is a publishing student and I had a conversation with her once on a bench. Her insights into life does not define a simple destiny. When a person has a great understanding into life, the chances of you utilizing the powers of creation from the unknown source of creation is strong. I would like to metaphorically say, from an eastern perspective, that she has a dragon’s fortune. I do not have expectations for her, but I would definitely not be surprised if did something great. Here is her quote:
"The meaning of life is to get to know God and grow in a relationship with him. To be a light to the world by loving people unconditionally as he loves us. And to introduce God and to build a relationship with God." – I
From such simple words, you can see that she ties a strong bond with God. The stronger your bond becomes, the more you realize the unconditional love God gives us. The more we can understand it, then the more we want to share it with the world around us.
My next respondent is a gorgeous lady from California. A new friend I made this year only. She is a nurse and she takes care of people day in and day out. I’ve heard so many stories of hers and the struggles she goes through. Every time she tells me something deep, it makes me smile because I know her words are sincere because it always ties in well with the stories she has told me before. Here is her quote:
"Haha I like how your "quick questions" are always very complex questions, that require a lot of thought and process :P
But to answer it, I think the meaning of life differs from person to person, what it might mean to me might not be what it means to you. So as for me personally the meaning is to be a light in this world, to show others the love and kindness of God, it's to be content with what we have been blessed with, it's to keep a positive outlook and to have a heart full of gratitude." - J
The first thing you will notice here is that it’s quite common for me to ask her "quick questions" :P the next thing you will notice is that she is a person that is quite content with life. I would like to call it "internal joy and peace"
To come to a conclusion with some of the above mentioned. We have a respondent that is busy studying to get his doctorate in the animal kingdom :P He does conclude it well by saying:
"To Serve God" – D
What you will see is that he doesn’t like to complicate things in his life. So to him, life was meant to be simple. He has been to Saudi Arabia where he did a couple of studies and learnt about the Arabic way of life. With his conclusion, I believe he tied in his experience of both a Christian world and the world he been through at Saudi Arabia.
Realists of life and the romantics of life
Now that we have seen what it is to be the ones that have a miracle about life deep within their hearts, we come to the realists of life and the romantics of life. The next one we have is of a lady that shows a common interest to me. I tend to always like a ton of her posts on facebook simply because I agree to it. But never the less, she is beautiful. I think I often have a different perspective to situations in life so it is always interesting to listen to her explain what she would do in the different situations I go through. So she decided to write me a poem instead of a paragraph. See what I mean by she is special? Haha. Well here it is:
"Life is a Fairytale!
It is Horror Movie,
A Sad Story,
And a Romatic Comedy
Wrapped and blended
Into Events that make up our lives.
There are characters that inspire
Laughter
Tears
Hope,
But most importantly Love.
Love Fuels the soul
To do good
To be good
And to shine like a light on others.
It is a river that twists and turns,
Flowing over rocks that are our challenges,
Trickling into the Earth to give life.
Love is our river – it lights a darkened world
So we can face another day" – A
Then we have the realistic people who take a completely different approach to life and these two are quite inspiring people in life as well. It is funny to see how different types of people can still live in the same world. But anyways, this lady (lost count on the amount of times I thought she was hot) has been working closely with me in a team for 2 years now. She comes from the middle east but now lives permanently in South Africa.
"For me, its to do things that make you happy and surround yourself with people that make you happy. There’s no point in anything else because life is too short" – K
Although her words make her sound self contained, she is one of the most compassionate person I know. Every time I wear a new set of clothing, she notices and comments on it. Every time I am emotionally different, she comforts me. She pays attention to small detail in my life. Which makes you wonder: What makes you truly happy in life? because she looks quite happy with her life.
Now to bring you back to earth a bit. The most practical girl I interviewed. She is working with digital forensic and that is really cool. And her quote is below:
"Good beer and better friends. I’m a simple girl." – S
Sometimes, being simple does really help. Is this question really that complicated? We don’t know.
But the last one I would like to end off with is a girl studying engineering and a whole book of thoughts running in her head. This was her quote:
"F***, that’s a long one. We will have to discuss it at home. I have too much to say" – Z
So what is my thoguths?
So after going through so many different respondents, where did I end up? What did I get to? It surely is a long one. I also have my own perspectives, I also have what I have learnt and gathered from what everyone said here today. What is the meaning of life for me? But I think I will leave all that mystery for next time. ;)
Being Awesome ^_^
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Oh. You might also want to watch Steve Jobs words on "what is the meaning of life"