The meaning of life: What is it, or is there one, or is it all relative?

Let’s answer one question at a time, and try to go from the simplest to the more complex issues.

Is the meaning of life relative? There are over 6 billion people on this planet today, and billions more who came before, and billions more to come. Ask any of them, in all their various situations in life, and you will rarely receive the same answer. What gives life meaning to one, obviously is not what gives meaning to another. Does the meaning of our lives come from an external source or from without. Does God give our life meaning? Or if there is no God, then does our life not have any meaning at all. That is a bigger question and issue, so I will leave that one alone for now. Assuming that we must give or find meaning within ourselves, I think the answers are going to be very different. However overall there may be some commonality.

Some say happiness is what gives life meaning. Some will then ask, “What is happiness?” This is not a one-size fits all type of question. Some people take great joy in the physical pleasures of the flesh. They want to eat good food, drink good wine, good sex etc. Life can’t be all about the hedonistic pleasures. Can it? How do you feel if your life is one of misery and poverty? How do you find joy in situations like that it? How is life meaningful to the person who doesn’t know where his next meal is from or where is he going to sleep. The meaning of his life is one of constant struggle to survive. Happiness is not part of his equation. Does that mean that person has no meaning? Does he get another chance at achieving happiness, if the meaning of life is experiencing the joy of being? Continue reading →

What is wisdom? Like any other philosophical question, this is not one that anybody can answer in just a few words. Like ignorance or foolhardiness, we can identify if when we see it. The wisdom of an act or by the thoughts of a person makes itself evident in many ways, however wisdom resides within the mind of the person doing the act or saying his or her thoughts.

Although a person may be educated, education is not a prerequisite for wisdom. I am quite sure that no university that has a Wisdom 101 course. One attribute of wisdom is the understanding yourself; knowing both your physical and moral strengths and weaknesses. If you know what you are weak at, you will find ways to strengthen those areas or to avoid them all together. Learning how to understand how your own mind works will help you to understand others. Wisdom is the ability to understand consequences, to look forward and assessing possible risks and making common sense judgments.

The bottom line answer for me is that wisdom is learning from your mistakes and after learning all you can, realizing ultimately that you, in fact, know nothing and are humbled by that fact. Any process of education, whether it is formal or not is enriching as it will help guide a person along their journey through life and allowing them to realize that there is more to life than just the path and its end.