08/25
In Quote of the Day ,Random Thoughts | Tags:
Sergiy,
I truly appreciate your very honest and sincere comment to the previous entry in my blog. Not very often people talk and discuss such things as meaning of life. I started to write you an answer but it grew up in something bigger than a simply reply. I took a liberty of quoting your message and posting it along with my answer to you as separate entry in my blog. I hope it is ok with you. I believe these things are important and I don’t want them to get lost somewhere in comment archives.
Here it is:
I knew you were going there. All your recent posts showed it clearly and it was just a matter of time when the main question was going to be posted – the meaning of life. I bet everyone in their life has asked this question once and so have I. Sure enough; it was painful to find a satisfying answer. Nothing seems to be right or make sense at all. Then I figured that that was exactly the problem. Trying to find the reasoning, I mean. Sounds strange, doesn’t it? But it worked! Well, at least for me.
When one is looking for the answer to the meaning of life he or she is never searches for the answer to the meaning of death. Why, indeed? Death is the natural end of life. It’s clear and hence does not require an answer. Period. But is it really the answer? Does one really know what death is? You can’t really answer this question until you are there and when you are there you cannot communicate back to those who are alive. Meaning what? Meaning, we don’t ask ourselves this “meaningless” question and rather focus on searching the answer to the meaning of life instead.
If you are asking where the heck I am getting at, I tell you to the answer I found for myself, my friend. The meaning of life is merely life itself in its infinite variety of biological forms including us, human beings. It is as simple as it gets. I believe that the answer mustn’t be complicated. I think simplicity rules the Universe. One can like it or not, but on that scale nothing matters at all. All is everything and everything is all.
The Why we live is not a question to me, but the Why we think is. Human’s mind is the biggest mystery to us, life forms.
* * *
Same as you were I was searching for an ultimate answer to this ultimate question. And at age of sixteen or seventeen I came to a logical conclusion similar to yours but more “mathematically rational” in a sense: there is no answer since the question is stated incorrectly. It does not meaning that ultimate question to the meaning of life does not exists, nor does it exists for that matter. It only means that we are asking an improper question. It reminds me and old anecdote: An airplane pilot asks his navigator – “Course?” and navigator answers – “33!”, “What’s 33?”, asks the pilot and the navigator replies – “But what’s the course?”
The fascination I found in Viktor Frankl‘s ideas is that he completely turned around tables on you. He writes:
Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, rather must recognize that is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.
What does it mean? It means that we should stop asking ultimate question of meaning of life but instead give answers since we are who being questioned. What questions you may ask? The questions we are faced every day, every hour. We may not even verbalize these questions, but they do exist. We, humans, are proud of the fact that we are the only beings on this planet who possess consciousness, free will. We make conscience decisions and actions every day, every hour. They constitute our life, our being.
Unlike an animal, man is no longer told by drives and instincts what he must do. And in contrast to man in former times, he is no longer told by traditions and values what he should do. Now, knowing neither what he must do nor what he should do, he sometimes does not even know what he basically wishes to do. Instead, he wishes to do what other people do… or he does what other people wish him to do…
So, the questions are: Why do you do what you do? What is the meaning of your daily conscience decisions and actions? What is the purpose? We have been told that we have a free will. But what is the meaning of things we are willing? What is that you want and WHY do you want it?
It may seem that we made a circle and we are back to the same old question about meaning of life. Not at all. There is a very distinct difference between an old search for ultimate question for meaning of life and answering questions about meaning that life asks you. The quest for meaning of life, if you dig deeper, refers to life as a fate, mission, or destiny, extrageneous and indifferent to you, your wills and desires. You must fulfill it. Period. It is forced upon you. There is no escape. It is like death. On other hand, being questioned by life is intimately personal and ultimately unique. It comes to a simple question: What is that I want in my life? And the question the life asks you in turn: Why? What is the meaning of it? Often we are lost to answer even to the first question. And sometimes it might take a lifetime to answer the second one…
That’s what I think about it…
0 Responses.
What a fantastic discussion. Two thumbs up to Igor and Serg on starting and carrying such a conversation.
Igor, I think, you are achieving a great success with your weblog. It is only 2 months old in this new format and we are already discussing issues such as meaning of life.
Just like you said, if you can reach for and engage few people into the areas of your interest, it is all worth it.
Igor,
Sure I don’t mind the quoting. On the contrary, I am honored that you dedicated a separate entry in your blog. That’s really nice.
Well, I cannot say that I’ve been asking myself the ultimate question since I was sixteen or seventeen. Those years were filled with typical teenager’s problems and there was simply no room for ultimate questions in every day’s series of events. Moreover, I don’t remember that I’ve ever discussed this with my classmates and friends from the high school and university. One surely needs time, reasoning and education to be able to start it. Thus, if you did it that early in your life – hats off.
I don’t think that life challenges us by posting questions. I’d rather agree that these questions are personal and unique. Once I came across a quote by Oswald Spengler: “A plant lives without knowing it. An animal lives and realizes it. A man is surprised by its life and asks questions to which he cannot find ultimate answers. All the man can do is to believe that his answers are right no matter whether the man is in fact Aristotle or a savage.” Life merely goes on and you do all to keep it going. Sure one can end it at will, but that does not finish the Life. Everything is balanced out.
“Do you have … [The Answer to the Great Question of Life, the Universe and Everything...]”
“Yes, I have. Though I don’t think that you are going to like it.”
“Doesn’t matter! We must know it! Now!”
“Forty-two,” said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.
Douglas Adams, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”