1 - “Life is just something to do between birth and death” said a witty philosopher. 2 - “Life is just one damn thing after another” said Elbert Hubbard.
3 - But “a life” is another thing all together. We lead a life; we don’t just live them. When we lead a life, we assume we know what we are doing and where we are going.”
4 - You can only really understand your life if you’re prepared to think about your death, and the limit of your own existence.
5- There is the story of a man who, at the age of eighteen started rating every day of his life and kept a record. Each day was marked as “good” or “very good”, “fair” or “bad” or “very bad”. Just before his death at eighty years, he watched as they checked his scoring for the past sixty years. The good days won by 1%! Not exactly an exciting life!
6 - Most people feel that ‘Rags to Riches’ is a more preferable life than Riches to Rags. But so many don’t get past “Rags” and their lives are dull and unsatisfying.
7 - Do you look back only to find how much each day looks like the day before, and how last year looked pretty much like the year before that?
8 - The thought “I need to get a life” leads to the question, Is there a difference between life and a life?”
9 - In life, is there anything much except a mass of repetitive detail?
Here are six quotations from the earliest philosophers and also some of our current academics and writers which might answer the question:
- Seneca: “He will live badly who does not know how to live well”
- Giacomo Leopardi: “He who has the courage to laugh is master of the world, much like he who is prepared to die.”
- David Hume: “The life of a man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster.”
- Reinhold Niebuhr “Every time I find the meaning of life, they change it.” - Jean Paul Sartre: “Nothing happens while you live. The scenery changes, people come and go, that’s all.”
- Pablo Neruda: “Little by little, and also in great leaps, life happened to me.”
So, are we left with lives of emptiness and without meaning? Do you believe in God? This is such a poor question because first we have to define God. God as the Supreme Being and Creator of all? In that case, I don’t believe in God or a god. Will the same God exist on other distant planets? Life has no meaning for Kangaroos, Lions, Eagles or Gorillas. Why should it have meaning for us?
John A Wilson, Gold Coast, December 2020
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