I have been pondering of late about the meaning of my life and it dawned upon me that there may be no meaning to my life at all. I was once told by a wise man that “Nothing has any meaning other than that which we attach to it. Man is a meaning-making machine.”
As that thought evolved and I thought about what it would mean if “Nothing matters”, I did a google search to see what would come up. Lo and behold, Nihilism came up and some commentary about the implications of nothing mattering and what effect that would have upon your thinking.
As I thought about that, I was lead down the rabbit hole – what effect would it really have upon my thinking and my behaviour if I really thought that nothing mattered? As I explored this thought, the implications became enormous – if this were true [or I thought it were true], almost everything that I think and everything that I do would change! In fact, as I thought back on my life, it appeared to me that almost every action I have taken has been predicated upon my belief that everything [no exceptions] has some sort of meaning.
Imagine, if you would, what effect the belief that nothing matters, would have upon your judgement about people and events. I think that all of my responses are responses to what I think a particular event “means”. If I remove the “meaning”, there is nothing that sparks or requires a “response” – perhaps this is what sages have referred to over the years as “acceptance”?
Anyway, as I pondered, I thought “If our existence does not matter and nothing actually has any meaning, what is the purpose of our life?” By that I mean, whilst our life does not matter in the overall scheme of the Universe [that appears almost self-evident to me], there may be some value in still having a “purpose” in our life – it is a question, if you like, “Why are we here?” Obviously, we are here as part of the ongoing development of this particular life form [homo sapiens] on this particular planet in this particular Universe and, therefore, our existence does have a purpose in an evolutionary [perhaps experimental] sense.
That thought led me to the question “What is the purpose of our existence in this evolutionary sense?” The conclusion that I have drawn, at this stage of my pondering, is that the purpose of our life is to learn to “love” ourselves. What led me to that conclusion? Well, if we are born with a “clean slate” [now I know there is much evidence that we are not – we already have some memories when we are born of our time in utero and there also seems to be some evidence that our DNA carries some memories from previous generations] – then what would be needed for us to evolve to the point where we/our species would be the most likely to survive/prosper? After all, is that not what evolution is all about?
This thought led me to the conclusion that, whilst we appear to be top of the tree species wise right now, we are destroying the planet, each other and ourselves which will inevitably lead to extinction! So, what would we have to do to actually be top of the tree, fostering a meaningful and interdependent relationship with our earthly cohabitants? Seems to me that we would have to live consciously. What does that actually mean? To me it means to live in awareness of the consequences of each of our actions. And, we can only do this if we actually love ourselves [that means no conditions, no judgements] understanding that we are “perfect” exactly as we are! Now, that’s a serious stretch, isn’t it?
Most of us are just incapable of accepting ourselves because we are so full of judgement. Why? Because, from the moment we were born, we were seeking to be “approved of” [read “loved”] and the only way that we could see this happening was by behaving the way our parents/siblings/community/society/TV/workmates/friends want us to. And, we would only need to do this if we were seeking their “approval” which, of course, we are!
This is a “massive” realisation! Almost beyond comprehension. Not that the realisation itself is of much value other than it may/could lead to a change of thinking and behaviour towards self-love.
This is an idea that I hope to explore in future blog posts.
Cheers for now – GeminiDreama
Awakenings 