What Is The Meaning of Life?: A Question For All Season.

Hello Family and Friends.
Hope life's giving y'all a good ride?
I love all the amazing things I read here every time. And you all are a wonderful people.

Welcome once again to my blog. Today I wrote about a topic that has weighed upon humanity since it ever began —the meaning of life.

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What is the meaning of life?

This is one question that has reverberated throughout human history, with an eternal query for an answer. It is one question that has been hanging on the wall of eternal existence — an unsolved puzzle. Philosophers from all ages have taken their shot at answering this one question, and have handed down useful clues that have guided our own quest at solving this great puzzle.

But then, Is it really the meaning of life we should be asking ourselves?

”Life" itself is vague. What it means for us—for anyone— depends on our choice of definition. For some, life is understood as

The attaining of some aim through the active creation of something of value,

which, according to Viktor Frankl is a “naive query” of the meaning of life. But then, there is another meaning that embraces

the wider cycles of life and death, of suffering and of dying.

From when a person is born up to the moment he breathes his last, and every other experience in between, covers the wide scope of what life is about. We cannot embrace some aspects and deny some unless we want to live sentimentally.

Personally, I have had good days of happiness, peace and enjoyment—times when everything seemed so good and unperturbed. Then came dark days of troubles, and pain, and sorrow —times of great suffering, precedent by lack, want and hardship. On one of those darkest days, some of my friends deserted me. Family members, though they didn't leave, treated me as if I was a plague or a curse. There were days I comtemplated suicide, unable to wrap my head around what was really happening to me. Heaven was as dark as the bottomless pit, and I had doubts if God was real because He didn't seem to exist. The silence was deafening. Honestly, my faith was shaken, and even collapsed. But somehow, I managed to keep a little hope alive.

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True, as Viktor Frankl puts it,

When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept his suffering as his task; his single and unique task. He will have to acknowledge the fact that even in suffering he is unique and alone in the universe. No one can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place. His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden.

Not that I accepted that it was destiny to suffer, but then I was suffering and there was nothing I could do about it. It was a situation I didn't pray for, but it was inevitable and I had to live through it. Just as Viktor Frankl wrote:

Every situation is distinguished by its uniqueness, and each situation calls for a different response.

In my own situation, I couldn't figure out what way to respond so I endured —to carry the cross despite the shame. It didn't even matter again what I expected from life. My focus shifted to what life expected from me, “If I ever survive this situation, what kind of man would I become?”
My answer consisted not in “ talk and meditation” but in “right action and in right conduct.” These moments of suffering were also part of my life’s journey, and hold their own meaning and purpose too. I cannot avoid them when they come, but I can try to find out what is required of me to do in those moments.

I can rightly agree that

It is impossible to define the meaning of life in a general way because the task, and therefore the meaning of life, differ from man to man, and from moment to moment. It's not something vague, but something very real and concrete, just as life's tasks are also very real and concrete — and it's different and unique for each individual.

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Thank you for reading, and do have a beautiful day and week ahead.