The Meaning of Life is to Live
But what does it mean to live?
You are here. Maybe your life is good, maybe not. You might be having a great day, an awful day, or simply a “meh” day. Things happening now or ahead might be incredible, or they might be scary. You are here. Anything is possible from one extreme to the other and everywhere in between.
Are you just going through the motions? Does your rote and routine dominate your life? Or are you having experiences, trying and doing new things, and exploring what life has to offer? Whatever the answer is, right now, that’s now. It’s not written in stone.
That means you get to choose, if things are shit, to turn them around. How? I don’t have a clue, but that’s because I’m not living your life, nor am I in your head, heart, or soul. What I do know is that you have options.
Your situation may be such, right now, that it feels like your options are nil. Or a choice between bad and worse. Maybe that’s true. However, you have choices. You are here. You’re alive. Choosing to live, to genuinely live, is as simple as making more choices and decisions consciously, actively, for yourself.
To most, the meaning of life is this overarching, maddening, almost impossible-to-explain or realize notion. It’s a matter of tremendous depth and a quest of epic proportions to be realized.
What if it’s far simpler than that?
The meaning of life is to live
Let’s face a couple of important facts, shall we? There are now 8 billion people living on Planet Earth. If everyone has some grand and glorious purpose, some overarching, amazing thing they’re supposed to do, that’s hard to wrap your brain around, right?
Everyone has a purpose, whether it’s some grand thing or not. That purpose is simple. It’s to live.
What that means is that you are here, now, in this time and place, to experience life. You’re here to learn, to grow, to love and have your heart broken, to meet new people, to make friends and enemies, and everything in between. In this present moment, right now, you are here to live.
This is not merely surviving. Nor is it living by rote, routine, and habit, subconsciously. You are not here to just endure and exist, nor be the plaything of some demagogue, guru, god, or whatever. Human beings are here to experience life and the wonders it has to offer.
It seems too simple, right? Too easy. Can you disprove it? Because I can’t. The meaning of life is truly simple. The meaning of life is to live.
It’s messy. Life is full of twists and turns, bumpy roads, challenges, heartaches, pain, and highs and lows. There’s paradox throughout. Today’s good person is tomorrow’s villain and vice versa. That’s all external, really, because through it all, good or bad, happy or sad, you are here. You live.
But do you live?
Wake up to your conscious awareness
The whole conservative notion that being “woke” is some ugly, bad, undesirable thing is ludicrous. Why? Because it means to be awake and consciously aware. That means you know not just what’s happening in the world without – which is easy. You know what’s happening within you. That’s harder.
When you are more self-aware, consciously aware, and mindful, you gain clarity. That clarity shows you that the many ideas presented to you of lack, scarcity, and insufficiency are bullshit. The “pie” is not limited. There are more than enough jobs, religions, sexual partners, friends, places to be, and more in the world for everyone. No other race, creed, or color wants to make you suffer for their benefit (at least beneath certain institutional levels).
Everyone desires the same thing. To live. To experience life, meet people, do things, learn things, find comfort and contentment. There’s nobody who doesn’t desire this. Despite messages to the contrary, this is all about the utterly intangible.
The things you’re sold in media, advertising, and the like are presented as the paths to happiness, enlightenment, comfort, and easing suffering. Tangible “things” are impermanent, which means any joy they bring you – while not invalid – is impermanent.
The intangibles also frequently change. Today’s lover is tomorrow’s horrible person. Nobody wants to be hurt, to suffer, to feel bad. But that’s a part of the human condition and unavoidable. It can be a great teacher even as an unfun part of living life.
When you choose to wake up to your conscious awareness you’re choosing to live. That is what the meaning of life is all about.
What does it mean to live?
To live is to be actively, consciously aware. It’s all about making choices and decisions to experience life. Via those choices and decisions, you’re choosing who, what, where, how, and why you are.
Probably the hardest thing to accept about this concept is this: You will have pain. There will be suffering. When you live life, you experience the good and the bad. Sometimes that’s an amazing, incredible experience. Other times it’s a terrible, painful, unwanted happening. Yet whatever it is, so long as you’re here, you’re living it.
This is why being asleep at the switch, just letting yourself be moved subconsciously by rote, routine, habit, the whims of others great and small, or anything/anyone other than yourself is counter to the meaning of life. You, and you alone, are in your head, heart, and soul. Only you can know, genuinely, what you’re thinking, what and how you’re feeling, your intentions, the negativity or positivity of your approach, and your actions and inactions. They can all be chosen and changed by you and only you.
This is why genuine, non-toxic positivity is important. Life is too short to spend it believing everything is awful, life sucks, and any other negatives. That’s a choice that impacts how you experience life. You’ll have bad days and negative experiences because everyone does. You can choose, however, the approach and overall attitude for your life at any time and change it as necessary.
I’d rather see life as full of potential and possibility than hopelessness and misery. The choice, however, is yours. That, ultimately, is the meaning of life and to live it.
Recognizing that the meaning of life is to live isn’t hard
It’s all about practicing mindfulness of your thoughts, feelings, intentions, and approach to direct your actions.
When you recognize and acknowledge that you’re the only one in your head, heart, and soul, and that you get to live your life how you choose, to live becomes powerful and important. Knowing that being awake, consciously aware, and mindful opens the way to experiencing life, to learning, to really living life to the fullest, you can make more mindful choices and decisions to live as fully as possible.
This empowers you, and your empowerment can empower others around you.
Consciously choosing your approach to life towards positivity or negativity – from the vast cylinder that exists between them – shifts life in a way that opens more dialogue. With a broader dialogue, you can explore and share where you are between the extremes and how that impacts you here and now.
Choosing thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions for yourself employs an approach and attitude of positivity for realizing amazing potential and possibilities for your life.
The better aware you are of yourself in the now, the more you can do to choose and decide how your life experiences will be. When that empowers you, it can spread to those around you to their empowerment.
Thank you for coming along on this journey.
This is the five-hundred and forty-second (542) entry of my Positivity series. I hope that these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone. Feel free to share, re-blog, and spread the positivity.
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