Don’t try : Life is Meaningless

Life, an interesting topic, isn’t it? Life is seen, interpreted, understood, and taken as something very significant and important. This four-letter word, if thought about in the endless horror of your mind and brain, would lead to madness. This word, which should not be taken so seriously and should be considered trivial, a mere Sunday afternoon event, is a word that can give millions of people chills and dread. Tell me, if I’m wrong, when was the last time a four-letter word gave you a heartache so sick that your life started falling apart?
 

Time speaks of life:
 

Life, before we go into its depths and torment ourselves, let’s talk about time. Time is the actual wealth, and we don’t have much of it. As soon as we realize it, our life gets even shorter, as if it already wasn’t. Time, when Socrates talks about it, starts with a paradox: what is time, or the present? It’s something between something that doesn’t exist but existed, and something that will exist but doesn’t exist right now. Socrates sees time, or the present, as a very fragile line of something. And so do I see life, as something very fragile.

Life is something between birth and death, something that happened but is not happening right now, and something that will happen but is not happening right now. Life and time are both very fragile and discrete. Now, when I say this, I mean it in a very simple terminology, and for some it might not share the bigger picture of life and, one can argue that we take birth every day, we live every day, and we die every day. But this metaphorical representation of birth, life, and death, as much as the idea of literary terminology, kills the idea of life. The metaphorical idea does the same; if not worse, it dissolves the significance of birth, life, and death, in its simplest form life, death, birth are interpretive to language and essence of text so used.
 

Life and the act:
 

The great scholars, philosophers, and thinkers have given a lot of significance to life. To them, life was something more than you and I could ever think, look, and understand. And probably that’s the beauty of life — it was not meant to be understood. I believe life, in all its certainty and uncertainty, is less than what the greats have explained or described it as. To me, life is just an act, rather than what life is actually described and often seen as something so meaningful and significant. Here, I don’t want to argue that acts don’t have any meaning or significance; acts do have their own meaning and purpose, but such meaning is of an artificial nature, a meaning made by humans like you and me.

Life, whereas, has meaning much more intrinsic, as the greats describe. It doesn’t come from any human; it comes from life itself. For example, we walk because we need to; the meaning or purpose, whatever is so significant, is extrinsic, made by us ourselves. This realization, that whatever act you do is of your own inherent yet extrinsic choice, meaning, and purpose, is dreadful for some and joyful for others. The greats explain life in both ways; something there is often overlooked is that life is not just a mere act or not more than an act.

What I mean when I say life, as often acclaimed, has an intrinsic meaning as opposed to an act, is to view life as person A, and you are person B. So, any meaning that life has should be coming from person A itself, but rather it comes from you, person B. That’s why I argue that the meaning of life is not intrinsic but inherently extrinsic. As it’s not arising from life but through life, the meaning of it is inherently extrinsic, as it comes inherently from you and extrinsic to life. You give meaning to life, but life doesn’t give meaning to its very own self, leading to this very vague, inherent, extrinsic nature of life’s meaning.

This view regards the free will of man, and life in itself doesn’t have meaning. That is why life is an act; an act, whatever you claim, has meaning only because of your interpretation of meaning or the writer’s meaning of it. An act, in itself, doesn’t mean anything until given. Life, in only one circumstance, can have meaning — if God existed — but that, too, would be extrinsic.
 

You need to die:
 

To torment you and myself even more, how about life being anything before certain death? That is one truth we all know and must accept. In contrast to the former, death is anything after the certain life of any individual. The question about life’s meaning and purpose becomes purposefully purposeless because, whatever you do, life will be given meaning by death itself. If death never happened, life would be meaningless, and anything you do, achieve, win — whatever you are, victor or victim, in the visage of voracious vicarious vandalism — it would all be meaningless.

Without much to say, nonetheless, the same goes for death. It would be less frightening for most humans if life never existed. Its meaning or purposefulness would be secondary to death. As such, death wouldn’t really exist, would it? You can’t stop something that never happened, can you?

To go back to the act mentioned, an act has a start, a story, a climax, and an end. If an act started but never ended, no matter how great the act is, no matter how great the story, or what height of cinema it achieves, without an end, it won’t be a proper act. As without an end, there can’t be an act, and without an act, there can’t be an end. An act didn’t really happen, but it ended — that end won’t be meaningful; it would be confusing, insignificant, and un-existential. Both the act, its start, and end are, and have meaning for and to each other.

In one’s whole life, he will never find meaning — that’s the curse. Man will find meaning, but that end, he will not find its other — who will find it? Life is an extrinsically inherent, selfless series of varying acts that give meaning to others. That is what life is. Well, that is what makes sense to me.
 

The end:
 

In a greater and simpler form, an act starts with a proper start and end. You are introduced to A, his whole story is thrown before you, and when he dies, you understand the meaning of death, the meaning of his act, the meaning of everything that character was. But B, you were never introduced to him; he was there and died. Would you feel the same level of meaning, significance, and emotions?

Life is very short; it’s an act. Act gracefully, introduce yourself, and shine, because if you don’t, there won’t be any meaning.