A Tadpole's Life Has Meaning Too

So, what, a tadpole’s life has no meaning? Hey, I’m only a teen, too. But I, unlike you, do believe that I have plenty of the wisdom and life experience needed to assess the meaning of life. Perhaps that sounds a wee bit self-assured and ignorant, but I hope to fix that by saying I think you have that wisdom, too. And so does everyone and anyone old enough to read and understand this. You see, I believe what you’re forgetting is that we are part of a group, we are not the group. The human race is a piece of life, a tiny percentage of all that is alive. (Just check your 6th grade science book; there’s a pie chart that will remind you just how much insects and fish outnumber us.) To an insect, 15 years is a thousand lifetimes. In comparison to the mosquito that bit my ear the other day (and he should be compared, because he is also part of that encompassing word ‘life’), you and I are both plenty qualified to assess the meaning of life. That’s just a reminder to take everything in perspective, my friend.
Now, let’s take a look at the word itself, in the context you used it: life. Is it another word for lifetime, the period of time in which all of our cells and organs are working correctly, the tiny window of time we have on this earth? Or do you mean it in a broader sense, the existence of breathing, intelligent beings that love and laugh and die? I suppose either definition works here. In my opinion, when you simplify life to its lowest terms, life is this second, this thought. Life is but a million of these seconds added together in haphazard pile called your life. It’s now. Is there a meaning to now? That brings me to your next point.
“The meaning of life is simply the quest to obtain knowledge… not the knowledge itself,” you say. Did you mean a human’s life? Let’s say you did. Meet Fred. Fred is your average middle-aged single guy. He wakes up at eight today, not seven, because he likes to sleep, and because he was up late the night before, editing his eharmony profile.
This means he won’t have the time to head to the gym before work, which makes him sad. He guzzles his caffeinated tea, although it’s never a good idea to guzzle tea, because he doesn’t want to be late for work, and unfortunately for him, his portable mug sprung a leak the other day, so he can’t drink it in the car. On the way to work, he puts on NPR, but since it is a particularly gloomy day, and because the news is particularly grim, he decides he’d rather listen to the Harry Chapin CD his niece gave him for Christmas...

And so his life goes on. I could explain every other mundane aspect of his day, but I think you get the idea. I hope I don’t sound patronizing and belittling when I speak of Fred, because that’s not my intention at all. I mean simply to put Fred’s life in perspective, so that we can examine his meaning in life.
In my opinion, the meaning of life is not the quest to obtain knowledge. I now say this with complete sincerity, with some fear of sounding like a Beatle song; The meaning of life is finding and achieving happiness. For humans, part of this quest involves searching for knowledge; humans are naturally very curious beings. However, why are we curious? Where does this quest for knowledge come from, or lead to, I should say? It all comes down to happiness. We work for love, money, acceptance, peace of mind, enlightenment, success, strength, and all else good, because we believe it will bring us joy. Every form of life seeks this state of being. It’s why we feel pain and a lack of happiness when our life is failing; hunger and suffering are signs of life ending. Of course, pain, suffering, and the struggle for happiness are all valuable parts of life; without them we wouldn’t feel or appreciate happiness as distinctly. And furthermore, numbness is not happiness. When we’re getting fillings put in, they don’t give us Novocain so we feel good, they do it so we don’t feel anything at all. We can only find and feel true happiness and love when we’ve also experienced some kind of low, some kind of pain. In short, it all comes down to the idea that happiness is an “up”, and you can only recognize that your up if you’re familiar with being low. Happiness is part of roller coaster, and numbness is only a train.
In short, I believe life loves life, and the meaning of life is to love life so that you continue to live. Look at Fred’s life, and you will see that everything he does is an attempt for happiness and peace of mind. We seek knowledge not because our lives are meant to seek, but because this seeking gives us (or at least we believe it should give us) a feeling of fulfillment. And fulfillment is a satisfied, happy feeling. As far as I’m concerned, it all comes down to that.