The Meaning of Life

         What is the meaning of life? This question has confounded mankind since it became capable of the complex thought needed to comprehend the question. What seems to be a simple question does not have a simple answer.  The answers are as unique and varied as the people and cultures that put them forth. The meaning of life can only be divined for each individual person through the culmination of choices and experiences gained throughout the individual’s life. It is through this process that we begin to obtain answers by better understanding the question.

         Through our own personal prism we are able to view the question in an individual sense. Although we try to empathize with others and visualize what it would be like if we were in their shoes we cannot truly know what they felt; we cannot replicate their thought process. The question of the meaning of life is one that an individual must seek out by themselves. This journey or path to “enlightenment” is the important part of the question.  As humans, we are doomed to make mistakes and through this journey we better ourselves. Through this journey we may not find the answer to the meaning of life but we can find the meaning to each of our own lives.

         Do we want to know the meaning of life? Should the scientists and great thinkers of our society ever come together and finally obtain the answer we seek will we be better for it? When we finally discover the answer will there be an awakening that puts an end to the hate, bigotry, war, and conflict in our world? I do not know. Should this ever come to pass and we no longer have to seek answers to this question will we be fulfilled? I think, or fear rather, that we will find a feeling of emptiness from a loss of purpose. When the journey is over and our answers found I fear we will find that the question is what gave meaning to our lives.