What If The Meaning Of Life Is The Simplest Thing Ever?
What if it’s staring us all right in the face?
The quest to find the meaning of life has occupied the human mind for most of recorded history. Why are we here? What are we doing? What’s the answer to the question of life, the Universe, and Everything? (That one we know – it’s 42).
It’s easy to argue that philosophy, religion, and science are all on the exact same quest – to discover the meaning of life. Each has their own approach to the question. Religion gives the meaning to an unseen God and serving his/her/its/their purpose. Philosophy gives the meaning to abstract notions of being, sometimes connected and other times disconnected (though largely philosophy has no straightforward answer). Science gives the meaning of life to empirical evidence, painstaking research, and discovering new laws, theories, and dynamics of the cosmos, great and small.
Even with centuries, and sometimes millennia of work, the answer remains unclear. As the once-popular novelty Magic 8 Ball tends to tell you,
“Ask again later.”
Thick tomes and deep volumes of books have been written in the quest to discover the meaning of life. Often, every question produces only more questions. The deep meaning of our purpose is a challenging, difficult question to answer.
Oh, let’s complicate this further. Can there possibly be only 1 answer that’s correct for all 8 billion people alive now (not to mention the probably 177 billion people who’ve ever lived on Earth)?
Maybe. And that’s why I believe that the answer to the meaning of life is quite possibly the simplest thing ever.
Without further ado – what if the answer to the meaning of life is this: TO LIVE.
How can it possibly be that simple?
Here are the reasons why I make this claim.
First – how many people do you know that don’t genuinely live their lives? Oh, they’re here, they exist, they’re surviving. But living? Growing? Thriving? Experiencing? Exploring the potential and possibilities all around us? I don’t know about you, but too few of the people I know are living beyond merely existing and surviving.
Note – nobody is constantly, always, actively living as above. Everyone goes through periods of simple survival, rote, routine, and getting by due to things and circumstances. But some people seldom, if ever, choose more than mere survival – and “live”, as such.
Secondly – how do you feel when you are acting intentionally? Doing something with purpose? How does it feel when that something is a thing you love, that brings you joy, that lights you up? When you’re actively, intentionally doing something – that’s living.
I don’t know about you, but the more I can feel that the more satisfaction, contentment, happiness, and joy I experience. What if that’s what it’s all about?
Thirdly – We are all energy. Energy makes up the core of absolutely everything both tangible and intangible in the entire cosmos. Microscopic to macroscopic, energy is the root of it all.
If energy can neither be created nor destroyed, but instead transmutes from one form to another to another, then your core energy transmuted from another form to the body you now occupy. That vessel, your body, contains your core energy at its ultimate, invisible root.
Why transmute from pure energy to a body if not for one reason – TO LIVE?
Lastly – Occam’s Razor. The idea of Occam’s Razor is that when presented with multiple possible answers, the simplest is usually the correct answer. To really live life is the simplest answer to the question of its meaning.
Shouldn’t the answer to the meaning of life be deep and complicated?
The idea that the meaning of life is abstract, deep, and complicated has led to discourse, disagreement, argument, violence, and ultimately to war. Why else would two religions with the same overall belief in a single god go to war over frequently minor, barely notable differences?
In my all-time favorite book – Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist – much is made of the idea that the Masterwork of alchemy is an almost impossible achievement. (The Masterwork, if you’re not familiar, is the creation of the Philosopher’s Stone – which can turn any metal into gold – and the Elixir of Life – which can cure all illnesses and grant its creator near-eternal life).
In The Alchemist, it’s explained that the how of creating the Masterwork is inscribed on a single Emerald Tablet. But this has been rejected along the way for scientific tracts, philosophical explanations, and exhaustive study and research. Tons of books and research scrolls have replaced the simple symbols inscribed on the Emerald Tablet. Yet the path to the Masterwork is not through the endless books, but instead via the inscription on the simple Emerald Tablet.
(FYI, Alchemy is an allegory for the quest for the Meaning of Life).
Rejecting simplicity is human nature. While knowledge is certainly power, and better than ignorance, it comes with a price. The loss of innocence. That’s why children who easily lose track of time and place in the joy and simplicity of play lose that when they start school with its regulations, rules, and routines.
As we age, we’re expected to layer complexity on like shrugging into a heavy down coat before stepping outside on an icy winter morning. It becomes necessary to sustain us.
Recognizing necessary from unnecessary complexity
To live in our society, it’s necessary to work for money so that we can have the necessities – food, shelter, and companionship. There are complexities involved here that are necessary.
Why? Do you want someone cutting into your body to remove your appendix who has ZERO medical training? Would you accept the pilot of the airplane you’re on having had no training nor experience as a pilot? Do you want a neighbor with no knowledge or experience working with electricity to rewire your house? Of course not.
That’s why there are necessary complexities. It takes time, study, will, desire, and training to learn skills like medicine, piloting, and electrical work.
Unfortunately, we add unnecessary complexities to our lives as well. To show that we have success, we spend money on things that we have little to no need of. Then there’s showing off our status as we desire others to perceive it. How many people will spend $100,000 on a fancy car – because they can – as a status symbol?
We add all sorts of unnecessary elements to our lives – often in the hope that it gives us a deeper sense of meaning. If I have it all, won’t I better know the meaning of life?
Unfortunately, the answer tends to be no. So, what do you need? Mindfulness.
It is via active, conscious awareness – mindfulness – that you can know who, what, where, how, and why you are. Mindfulness further reveals to you the difference between the necessary and the unnecessary.
And I would argue that via active, engaged mindfulness – we genuinely live. And that is the true meaning of life.
Mindfulness to recognize the meaning of life
Active conscious awareness is not about what’s in the world around you. This is about your inner being. It’s current, present awareness of your conscious mindset/headspace/psyche self.
Becoming mindful is as easy as knowing, here and now, what you’re thinking, what and how you’re feeling, what your intentions are, and what you are and aren’t doing.
Via active mindfulness, you can choose to change your thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions. Ergo, if they’re displeasing you, you can change them.
When it comes to the meaning of life, mindfulness informs you if you’re merely surviving and existing or living and experiencing. Are you making choices and decisions to learn, grow, see, do, feel, and experience all the potential, possibilities, and wonders of this life?
This is not about grand and glorious purpose. It’s about choices we make daily. Hence, some days we are only capable of surviving and merely existing. Welcome to the Human Condition, this is a normal thing. Shit happens, the unexpected puts obstacles on your life path, and life can be unpredictable in other ways.
Rather than make ourselves crazy seeking challenging answers to the meaning of life, isn’t it entirely possible it’s simply to live? That means experiencing all the good and bad, pain and pleasure, ups and downs, joys and sorrows, and everything in between. But when you choose to be mindful, and take actions to live – isn’t that, when all is said and done, a singular purpose every single one of us can get behind?
What if the meaning of life is the simplest thing ever – and that’s to genuinely TO LIVE and experience it all?
This is the six-hundred and eighteenth (618) exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are my ideas for – and experiences with – applying mindfulness and positivity to walk along a chosen path of life to consciously create reality.
I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world and empower as many people as I can with conscious reality creation.
Thank you for joining me. Feel free to re-post and share this.
The first year of Pathwalking, including expanded ideas, is available here. Check out Amazon for my published fiction and nonfiction works.
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