Far superior men and women than I have attempted to answer the mystifying, age-old question, what is the meaning of life?
Heck, I’m still wrestling with the meaning of the lyrics of Bob Dylan’s Desolation Row and It’s All Over Now Baby Blue songs.
The magnificence and majesty of the question itself is that it’s virtually unanswerable. A person’s belief and reaction is vastly an individual one based on their religious convictions, life experiences and upbringing
The event that started me contemplating this conundrum occurred about three weeks ago.
A group of friends and acquaintances gathered at the foot of the Manhattan Beach Pier to conduct a celebration of life and spread the ashes of a dear friend who had recently passed away from cancer.
We slowly made our way to the end of the pier, listened to a variety of moving, heartfelt tributes, and poignantly released his ashes to the sea. Over the course of the next few days, I sadly recalled an ever-growing list of friends who had passed away during my lifetime.
As you might expect most had occurred over the past 10 years. My mind then wandered to the perplexing question we have all asked ourselves over the years–what is the meaning of life?
Unable to come up with what I considered a suitable mind-easing answer, I Goggled for clarity and understanding.
Below are a few of the more satisfying and reassuring results. “You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.” Albert Camus “The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity.” Leo Tolstoy “I think essentially the meaning of life is probably the journey and not really any one thing or an outcome or a result.” Charisma Carpenter “Just living is not enough…one must have sunshine, freedom and a little flower.” Hans Christian Andersen
“When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left and could say, I used everything you gave me.” Erma Bombeck
“The purpose of life is a life of purpose.” Attributed to both Ludwig Wittgenstein and Robert Byrne
“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.” Elwyn Brooks White
“Life is simple, it’s just not easy.” Author Unknown
“A life without cause is a life without effect.” Barbarella “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” Henry David Thoreau
After about an hour or so of reading profound insightful references, I decided to turn to humorous quotes to lighten and brighten my outlook on life. “My life has no purpose, no direction, no aim, no meaning and yet I’m happy. I can’t figure it out. What am I doing right?” Charles Schulz
“Life is so constructed that an event does not, cannot, will not match the expectation.” Charlotte Bronet
“Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive.” Elbert Hubbard
“Personally, I don’t think there’s intelligent life on other planets. Why should other planets be any different from this one?” Bob Monkhouse
“Life is a foreign language; all men mispronounce it.” Chistopher Morley
“Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable.” Woody Allen
“It’s possible, you can never know that the universe exists only for me. If so, it’s sure going well for me, I must admit.” Bill Gates “I hope life isn’t a big joke, because I don’t get it.” Jack Handly
“You fall out of your mother’s womb, you crawl across open country under fire, and drop into your grave.” Quentin Crisp.
Of course there are hundreds of provocative, significant and meaningful quotes. However, the enormity of the question is mind numbing.
So, I’ve decided on the KISS (keep it simple stupid) approach for now and come up with a temporary, simplistic, easy to grasp quote of my own: “Enjoy Life!”
