Meaning of Life

This post is my entry for January’s IndieWeb Carnival being hosted by Jeremiah.

January seems like a great time to have the theme of Meaning of Life for the carnival. After spending time reflecting as one calendar cycle completes and another inevitably begins, my brain is in a good place to have some thoughts on this topic. From conversations had, read and overheard, I’d say the vast majority of people put a heavy weight on the question of “What is the meaning of life?” I don’t fall into that category.

For me, there are two frames of reference to answer the question. The more intimately personal perspective and the more as a human living on planet Earth perspective. Let’s start with the broader and more generic one. As a human being, it is my belief that if you distill it to its purest form, the meaning of life is to achieve what many refer to as karmic balance. It’s ironic to me that the term balance is used, because I think the goal should be to have it imbalanced with the positive outweighing the negative, but that’s idealistic. I think the balance comes from the reality that we’ll all have negative energy emit from us at points, so therefore the goal is to try and net to even or skew positive. This concept is so simple, which is why I love it. It’s the most simplistic framing for decision making and to level your thinking at any given moment. You see it take form in so many alternate contexts. WWJD comes to mind from a Christian religion perspective. Maybe The Beatles summarized it the best with the lyrics:

…and in the end, the love you take, is equal to the love… you make.

Zooming in on the speck that is you, there’s the more personal answer to the question. If you can subscribe to the line of thinking for the general human meaning, the personal answer can live in harmony by defining the specifics of how you achieve the balance in the ways that benefit the humans around you most. For some, this is by focusing on family and raising children that contribute more karmic energy than they consume. For others, this is by adding energy in the form of artistic expresssions that allow other humans to experience life in a way they cannot create with their own hands. The hardest part about this personal answer is that it is innately derived. Certainly, you can be influenced or guided to an answer by the experience or wisdom of others, but it’s akin to wearing a suit off the rack vs. one custom-tailored to you. To carry that analogy forward, a tailored suit costs more, as does a tailored and intentionally lived life. You have to spend more time in thoughts, both good and bad. You have to be much more decisive, which can be exhausting at times. You have to have the grit and conviction to push against the norms and make the choices that lead you to your own answer to the question. It isn’t always easy, or comfortable, but that’s kind of the point.

If one is feeling lost on their own meandering journey to find meaning in their life, come back to the easier to frame question of Is my energy gauge net positive or net negative?. That question isn’t always one you can answer in the way you’d wish, but knowing the reality of the answer is the only way to make the change to yield a different answer in the future. For me, in my current existence on this giant rock, I’m focused on trying to be the best husband and father I can be. The meaning of my life, is to aid those around me in gaining perspective on what their own meaning is and will evolve to be in the future. The answer to my personal meaning of life question has shifted and shaped itself over time. Much like a suit I wore to one event many years ago doesn’t fit me well today, I adjust and refine as the world and energies around me fluctuate. Don’t fool yourself into believing that your personal meaning can’t evolve with you.

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