Why do we live?

What is it that keeps pushing us to live on?

Well, it’s subjective.

It could be a person, animal, project, hobby, goal, or just about anything.

When my good friend Justin elaborated on his meaning of life, which was the following; “The meaning of life is pliable, moldable as you grow as a person. You learn lessons as you grow and that meaning changes with it. For some it’s success, for others it’s being able to get by. It’s all just a vision you need to shape yourself at the end of the day. It’s all to the heart and mind. You can’t turn a blind eye to it or be silent about it. Something as simple as self-improvement for what you think is necessary is part of the process. Like getting a haircut.”

Just like the meaning of life, there are other important things in life. One of those things is having goals since they give you something to strive for. For Justin, it’s being able to get a stable job so he can live out his life and enjoy the little things in comfort. Simple, yet desirable goals.

But maybe something is going on, and you can’t seem to get a hold of anything. Maybe things are just too chaotic around you. If that were to happen, a good thing to do would be to get out of the situation and do something that calms you. You could do something like think about your favorite moment as Justin did, “For me, it was the first time I had a bagel with butter on it. Every time since then it’s calmed me down.”

I feel like a quote that would resonate well with both Justin and maybe you, is one by Friedrich Nietzsche; “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.”

For some people, their goals and purpose could be to take care of things, much like my friend Tyler. “My dream life is having enough money to live comfortably and work with all kinds of Reptiles, Amphibians, and whatnot.”,  was his response to the question of what his dream life would be. He values animal life greatly and wants to make sure that he will get to work with them in his career. He generally has humble aspirations, like Justin does. For him, the meaning of life is the following: “True comfortability, finding what you enjoy most and making it a pillar in your life. If you’re living unhappily then you aren’t truly living.”

Even when you’re having issues finding that thing that you should integrate into your life you can at least figure the other things out. Even Albert Camus had something to say about that, which was, “I may not have been sure about what really did interest me, but I was absolutely sure about what didn’t.” You don’t need to know everything right from the get-go and to be honest it could take a long while, but eventually you end up getting to that one spot you want to be at. The point where you find the things that make you happy in life.

Finding the right things for you is important, but you shouldn’t always be actively searching for them, because they could just end up finding you regardless, and if all your time is spent searching, where is your time to live?

“You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.” This was another thing that Camus had said, and I find that it’s likely that Tyler would agree with the aforementioned quote, as he said something along the lines of ‘If you’re living unhappily, then you aren’t truly living.

Many different people find joy in doing many different things. For my close friend Abde; It’s making things. He misses his 5th grade because he had so much time for working on small passion projects with another close friend of his. He’s always been passionate about this kind of stuff and wants to integrate it into his life more.

Abde wants to achieve certain goals, quite a few of them actually, a good amount of them which are mentioned in this reply of his; “Being able to pay my bills. Having some sort of decent free time. Maybe one or two days off in the week with 4 or 5 hours off during the week. As well as taking all my ideas, concepts, and all things, and turning them into one big interconnected comprehensive format, like an animation, some drawings, or other things along the lines of that.”

He finds joy in his creativity and small projects and loves talking about them quite a lot, always explaining in great detail.

Oftentimes, he cracks jokes and comes up with them incredibly quickly, he’s generally good at improvising things and rolling with the punches.

Although when he went to explain what the meaning of life was to him, he gave a rather unique explanation; “If life were a local establishment, to live a life where you could die and leave behind a positive and well-worded 5-star review while being satisfied. Well to be more specific, I’d have to say the meaning of life is to live a life that was worth it by the time that you die if that makes sense”.

So why did I introduce these people? What was the point of it? 

I did so because they are 3 different people which perfectly demonstrates what I meant at the beginning. Justin wants to be able to enjoy the simple things in life. Abde wants to create things and mess around with them. Tyler wants to take care of animals and share his love for them.

3 Different aspirations, for 3 different people.

Albert Camus believed that the world was devoid of meaning, that it was absurd, and that we should rebel against it. However, I’d say that rebelling against the absurdity of it all kind of gives it meaning when you think about it. It’s not just that though.

Some people might ask, “If we all end up as dust and bones in the end, what’s the point?” The point is to finish life being more than just dust and bones. To live a life worth living where you’ve done what you enjoyed and what you wanted to.

Know that you only have so much time in this world, which is exactly why you should do something with it. I’m not saying to never take breaks or to charge through everything at full speed. I’m saying it because it is worth it to do something you enjoy. Even if it’s just trying to be a better person.

Everyone is dealing with things these days, with personal issues and the chaos of the world. When you think that there’s no purpose to it; it gets a lot harder. The inverse is true when you’ve found your meaning in life, your drive, your purpose.