What is the meaning of life? Correct answer:  There is no underlying meaning to life.  We are born and then we die.  In between these two seminal dates (for us, and only for us), we are granted a finite number of days in which to experience this unique dimension called consciousness.  How we choose to spend these precious days is entirely up to us.  Time is the only common denominator linking us to both our ancestors and our descendants.  Once you are gone from this planet someone new will step in immediately to take your place, and five hundred years from now–unless your name happens to be Jesus Christ, Napoleon Bonaparte, George Washington, or some other overarching historical figure–no one will ever have heard of you.  Furthermore, no one will give a shit that you ever existed either.  This is not being cruel; it is being ruthlessly honest.  There is no transcendent meaning to life, only a finite, wholly mathematical, undetermined number of days each individual is granted in which to experience consciousness, and you would be well advised to start relishing that relatively small allotment before the meter on your mortality tank drops down to less than a quarter tank and you “suddenly” face the risk of those incomparable days as a sentient being running out.  And they will eventually come to an end too, let me assure you of that.  There are no mulligans on life.  When you pass away some day and your body eventually transforms back into the bare stardust from whence each of us came, no one will mourn for very long nor attach any significant “meaning” to the life you happened to live as a transient, puny resident on Earth’s timeless surface.  You were here…..and then quickly and unceremoniously you were gone, and life as we know it and the Universe encasing us will continue on without skipping a beat. We are only important and indispensable in our own minds…..

NOTE:  The following poem is borrowed from an anthology of poetry entitled “The Changing Seasons of Life”, which was authored by Fred Blahnik and published in 2016.

 

Another Day Passed

By Frederick J. Blahnik

 

The sun slips silently over the western horizon

I watch it closely as it disappears from sight

Darkness slowly settles in while a battalion of crickets intensify their raucous chirping

Another day passed

Never to return………

 

I go for a walk down a desolate gravel road

Corn growing tall, stretching eagerly toward the heavens

The furry, more-gray-than-white dog at my feet panting heavily in the oppressive summer heat

Another day passed

Never to return………

 

Daughters home from college for the summer

Working odd jobs, lazying around the house the remainder of the time

I can remember back–Way back in time!!!–when I too got to indulge in that same Bohemian lifestyle

Another day passed

Never to return………

 

Dogs barking outside the kitchen window

Just a pick-up truck going by on our township road, driving slowly yet not menacingly

But that’s the reason you always wanna keep a good watchdog around your place in the country, right?!

Another day passed

Never to return…….

 

Sitting out back now savoring a strong whiskey and Squirt

Sealing the lid on yet another wondrous, eventful day

What about living and life ain’t there to like?

Another day passed

Never to return………

 

Then multiply these dreamy, never-alike seamless days by a hundred and then by another three hundred

Years pass

Never to return….…

 

And a life quickly passes as well

Never to return………

…..she felt the knife sliding between two ribs on the left side of his chest, and then she heard a gentle hissing sound as blood came gushing out of this newly created body orifice while the total stranger stumbled about awkwardly before silently toppling over backward onto an immaculately groomed carpet. JESUS CHRIST!!!!!  The horror of it all!!!  Diane gasped involuntarily while sweat rushed from every pore in her body, drenching her lavender pajama top as though she had just taken a lengthy shower in the garment; she found herself frantic to escape this hideous nightmare she found herself trapped within…..this horrible charade…..this ghoulish scene-playing–and the sooner the better!  But then she went to brush some rogue strands of hair back from her forehead…..and Diane quickly discovered the sticky blood on her hands was every bit as real as the transcendent fear she was feeling now in her heart…..

…..she was so certain she was infallible that she looked upon advice as charity, some useless commodity to be distributed at random exclusively to the stupid and the feckless and the dregs of society, but definitely unbecoming to someone of her magisterial dignity. Then one day–by sheer happenstance and through no fault of her own–she became one of those aforementioned miscreants, and her perspective abruptly pivoted and did an about-face. She was now of the proper mindset to accept hand-outs, including and especially salient words of wisdom…..

 

An “expert” is anyone who voices a strong opinion when they are more than fifty miles away from home. It doesn’t matter one whit whether they know anything about whilst they speak; all that matters is their degree of certitude and the novelty of their alien presence in a tightly-knit, traditional community paralyzed by stasis and blind tradition.

A committee is a random group of people assembled to hammer out a consensual agreement. No uniformity, no matching fabrics, no shared vision.  Once everyone has thrown in their ten cents worth and a single common denominator has been revealed amongst this very diverse group of individuals without offending anyone and without unnecessarily bruising any member’s feelings, hours if not days have been wasted, while the worth of their eventual watered-down edict could easily be squeezed into the nest of a bantam hummingbird.

…..and the long-awaited day finally arrived like a prophet bearing gifts, yet she found the anticipated elegance and pulchritude of that lonely, beleaguered day fell far short of her lofty expectations. Her admittedly excessive enthusiasm was dashed.   The day felt rather ordinary, vapid…..not that much unlike any of the others which had preceded it.  And right then and there she was struck by an epiphany, one that would stick with her as her constant companion for the remainder of her days on Earth:  Every day IS exactly the same in character as the one which comes before it–twenty four hours in length and bounded by the sun’s appearance and subsequent disappearance on each of its ends–and thus it was entirely up to her to shape the thing in the manner in which she would like to see it unfold.  It was the substrate, the putty, the globby paper mache; she was the sculptor assigned to oversee this construction project on a regular, ongoing basis.  And with that life-changing realization came some overdue peace of mind—a natural tranquilizer which would help define her disposition and outlook on life from that pivotal point forward…..

Use the following philosophy/litmus test before starting any sort of project in your lifetime, however small: What if I decided NOT to do this activity?  Is it immanently productive?  Who will this particular project impact, either in a positive or negative fashion, or worse–Will it impact no one at all?  Does this activity I have in mind constitute good, efficient usage of my limited time here on Earth?  Is it going to contribute anything of value to my happiness, or the happiness of those I love most, in any significant way?  And lastly, but most importantly:  Would it make any difference in the big scheme of things if I simply did not do this task or activity at hand and moved on to something altogether different?!?!  Will my non-participation have a negative impact on anyone or anything???  Might this endeavor have a lasting impact on humanity, however miniscule…..or not?  (Hint:  Making one’s bed every morning like an obsessive hamster churning away on a spinning wheel is a classic example of time simply being wasted egregiously in a meaningless non-activity; so too are a multitude of the household and yard chores we feel compelled to do blindly and without thinking every day of our lives, i.e. mowing your lawn twice a week, raking up every fallen leaf, washing clothes compulsively, doing dishes each and every evening following supper, etc. etc. etc.).

…..and the new reality quickly became the old reality, and things that just days ago seemed fresh and exciting now seemed dull and unbearably tedious. Why is this so?  Why do things become humdrum and pedestrian so quickly?  How can a life morph into a dreary existence after but a handful of spins on the carousel?  Once the shine wears off an apple, it no longer begs consumption.  Once you’ve been to Paris, your second and third and fourth views of the mythical city are not nearly as special.  Once you move past that nuclear first impression of her unparalleled beauty, her warts speedily become visible.  Same thing with life.  Once an experience has been sampled for the first time, it no longer holds the same allure that attracted you to it in the first place.  I guess you could say life is coldhearted and eminently lackluster because of this, yet that characterization does not do it sufficient justice and greatly oversimplifies its ethereal underlying meaning…..

There was no light in our Universe for the first two hundred years after it was created, only darkness. The first stars didn’t “turn on” until after two hundred million years had elapsed.  Two hundred million years!  For two hundred million years, the place we now inhabit was nothing more than a vast expanse of Negro nothingness……a pitch-black vacuum devoid of anything to illuminate our cosmic landscape.  And then—as though by “black” magic–the first stars started blinking on to show the way for that which followed.  Think of said scenario the next time your future looks so bleak there doesn’t appear to be even so much as a soupcon of light entering your life.  Because if you had lived at a much earlier time in the history of our Universe……there was no light and consequently no dreams or visions to carry mankind forward…….