Welcome to another installment of what Whitney and I are calling ‘collective blogging.’ To refresh everyone’s memory, we will both be writing blog entries on the same topic every week as an exercise to see how different our thought processes and memories are. Hopefully it will be good practice for an idea we have for NaNoWriMo 2009 – to write the same novel, but separately.
Today’s topic: What is the meaning of life?
To be honest, my initial response to this topic was to give a joke answer and tell all my readers that the meaning of life was 42. If you have never read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, you probably don’t know why 42 would be considered an answer to this particular question, nor do you follow why it’s a joke answer. I recommend reading the books because they are fabulous, but in case you aren’t going to I will sum up why 42 would come to mind: a race of highly advanced beings in HGG create a machine to answer this very question – oh, and the machine is Earth. The machine (Earth) is about to render its answer (42) to the question (what is the meaning of life, the universe, and everything) when it is destroyed by hateful Vogons. Like I said, you should really read the books.
Obviously this question – what is the meaning of life – is a philosophical question for which there is no “right” answer. Furthermore, it seems to me that you might need to define what life is to even begin to discuss what its meaning is. The scientific definition of life is still a debated topic, and being that this is more of a philosophical question anyway, I will assume that to answer it there may be more importance in defining consciousness and self-awareness than in defining what is and is not alive. I’m not sure I can define either of those things, but I will say I feel sure humans are both conscious beings and self-aware, and therefore alive and justified in asking the question, ‘what is the meaning of life?’
This question can also be a problem if you believe life exists anywhere else in the universe – another hotly debated issue that I will not delve into here, except to say I believe it probably does. Carl Sagan explained the rationale for why I believe that better than I ever will:
“Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.” ~ Carl Sagan
If we are alone in the universe, then life is precious and therefore meaningful. But if we aren’t alone, what we do here might be tiny and insignificant in the theater of the universe. For anyone that looks up and thinks we might not be alone, that thought makes the question of the meaning of life rather esoteric.
This is why the joke answer of 42 would have been a much easier way to go with this topic!
I figure that all science and philosophy aside, humans pretty much want to feel like we matter, and that there is meaning to life. The ultimate answer to life, the universe, and everything may not be something we – the living humans on planet Earth – are meant to know. I also figure that even if we don’t matter a whole lot to the universe, we matter quite a bit to the people in our lives. Interpersonal relationships, the people we choose to let in, that we love, they are what give meaning to life. We profoundly effect more lives than we probably realize. I know a little bit about this – I recently lost someone who I did not realize touched me as much as he did until he wasn’t here anymore. So I don’t think the meaning of life is about having the highest paying job, or being the most famous you can possibly be. I think the meaning of life is to leave gentle footprints on the people who will remember we lived.
Although, I do still leave room for the meaning of life to turn out to be 42. You never know.
If you want to read Whitney’s take on the meaning of life, you can read it here.
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