What Makes Life Meaningful
A Way of the-read Saying Hello to You.
Prologue
“Death, illness, old age, are parts of our lives, it comes. Now better to look at death as a part of our life, sooner or later it will come. Now what’s important is our daily life, our daily life should be meaningful. Meaningful means; if possible, help others, if not at least restrain in harming others.” — Dalai Lama
That is a beautiful, beautiful passage quoted from Dalai Lama, a wise man from Tibet who is also the pinnacle figure of Tibetan Buddhist. Arguably, I would say that one wants to get a meaningful life if one gets the chance to take it. I mean, the even word ‘meaningful life’ sounds catchy enough to make someone liking it, for me, it makes me think as if I’m an anime character who did all the good deeds and died to protect the main character, in his arms, with a smile — then the main character cries out loud.
Meaningful Meaning
We work, eat, shit, love, marry, learn, sex, kill, hate. We’re doing all these things in pursuit of a ‘meaningful life’.
We may/not agree with the statement above, as we may/not agree with Dalai Lama’s definition of a meaningful life, and there may never be an actual-exact definition that we can all agree on this. In Islam, some may perceive that one’s life is meaningful when one becoming a khilafah (manager/leader) of the world, others would perceive it would be meaningful if they can devote themselves to Allah SWT’s (The Most-Glorified Most-High) commandments and distant themselves from sins. A Sufi's perspective might change it to an extreme extent: “When one’s only devoting himself into Allah SWT, even he rejects heaven if he’s pursuing it and not Allah’s SWT grace”. A ‘humble’ person might think that his life is meaningful when he can always be surrounded by his friends and his little family, with enough fortune to live. One may believe in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and think his life is fully-lived if he’s ticking all the boxes in it.
Research conducted at Rush University Medical Center of Chicago by Boyle et.al., examines the relationship between a meaningful life and longevity on the elderly. The result is that people who thought that their life is meaningful/ has a meaning has a less percentage of cumulative hazard of dying than those who thought that their life is meaningless. This indicates that if your life is meaningful, you might have a longer lifespan (less hazard of dying).
I, myself, consider a meaningful life as a state when I lived my life with values that I prized the most; freedom, persistence and knowledge.
And for those who aren’t willingly helping others as Dalai Lama said nor Islamic enough to devote themselves to Allah SWT, that research may serve as a reason to find a ‘meaningful life’.
“I, myself, consider a meaningful life as a state when I lived my life with values that I prized the most; freedom, persistence and knowledge.”
The Nihilist
All being said, our obsession in pursuing a meaningful life sometimes makes other people suffer, littering their lives with our destructive effort on our way. Sometimes it's just leads toward a meaningless end, thus making us think about what life best to do the most in our lives; being sucks. Sometimes — or oftentimes for others — life just sucks, it gives constant suffering to the living creature more than it gives cheeriness, waiting for its turn to die, to put it simply:
Life is meaningless.
This view is not new, Nietzsche popularized this in the 19th century, and there’s a lot of others that believe so. You’re doing the same routines from Monday to Saturday, much like a tale of Sisyphus who pushes a giant boulder to a top of a mountain only to find himself repeating it at the very bottom for eternity.
Are they wrong? I don’t know… yet, but for me, I think it’s also meaningless to think that our life is meaningless, I mean, whether you like it or not, we already live right? Thus embracing it and try to make the most of it might just be good (I know it sounds like a cat poster but it’s true).
A Suggestion and A Hello
As I said in the earlier section that embracing life and makes the most of it is a beautiful way to look at life. Alas, it’s not even answering the very question this article asks: Why should I live a meaningful life? What is that anyway? For you, I don’t know… I have my answers and Dalai Lama and Nietzsche have theirs, a dear friend of mine has a nihilistic view with a twist of positivism and stoicism. I can’t really help you but you can find it by yourself, maybe contemplating what dear to you the most will help you find it, or maybe you will agree with others' views. Whatever it means to you, I would suggest nothing but this: don’t try to pursue a meaningful life, try to give one (cheesy as fvck). As I believe that ‘meaning’ is not a scarce commodity for us to pursue and compete but rather a thing that is so abundant that we can give to others.
And this is a hello from the-read, my attempt in giving a meaningful life. I hope that the-read embodies all of my prized-values and stays that way, and I hope you enjoying reading it. So, hello world!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 🤟🤟🤟🤟🤟
don’t try to pursue a meaningful life, try to give one.
