What is the purpose of life anyway?
“The mystery of life isn’t a problem to solve, but a reality to experience.”
Like most do at some point in their lives, I’ve been pondering the purpose of life lately.
And by pondering, I mean filled with what is best described as a nihilistic shrug filled with an existential listlessness.
I’ve found myself haunted far greater and for far longer than anticipated by having grappled with my own mortality at 29.
Rebounding from something life-altering and life-threatening is by no means a linear process. It’s filled with a confusing and contradictory mélange of emotions that aren’t your run-of-the-mill, everyday feelings — relief, joy, fury, sorrow, gratitude, grief — swinging you round and round the emotional equivalent of the ride from hell.
At some point through the process, you hit this, frankly speaking, intoxicating state of exhilaration that feels akin to enlightenment. It doesn’t last long. Sadly, as appealing as it sounds, only the insane can sustain a state of perpetual exhilaration.
But, I digress.
Lying on what you’ve assumed is your deathbed leaves you with not a lot to do other than ponder your life, your death and whatever happens after.
It’s one thing to know rationally that everyone dies one day. It’s a whole other beast to face it head-on.
You think about the things you regret doing. Worse yet, the things you regret not doing or not having gotten the chance to do.
So naturally, sooner than I was sure I would survive, and much too soon from when I actually could, I started on my ‘no more future regrets’ list — launching Bravely, getting back on a skateboard, celebrating birthdays and Christmases, skiing in Japan again.
But as time passed and the euphoria of clawing out of the clutches of death (not to be dramatic or anything) faded into the background, and the hard, lonely reality of picking up the pieces sank in, I started to find myself perpetually asking:
“What’s the point?”
For over a year, this question kept me in a frozen limbo. It perplexed my husband, my best friend, and even my therapist. The source of the question made logical sense: facing death made me question life. But the solution?
If you’ve read this far in hopes of an answer to this very question that has endured in humans across ages and cultures, quite unsurprisingly, I’m here to disappoint.
Seriously pondering the meaning of life is like a bell you can’t unring. You can try to put it aside, distract yourself, pretend it doesn’t matter. But the nature of the question haunts you as you go about trying to live your life, reappearing when you least want it to.
Attempts to answer this philosophical question for my own sanity have led to 3 types of unsatisfactory answers:
Oversimplification: What things in life give you meaning?
Tautology: The meaning of life is the meaning you give it.
Subjectiveness: What is your definition of a life worth living?
None of these successfully, completely and objectively answer the question. But perhaps that is the answer. One that is simpler than it seems, subjective, and defined by you and only you. Who knows?
It was only today, by sheer chance and completely outside of my attempts to answer this dreaded question, that I came across a response that was finally satisfactory to me.
There, as I was reading, an immense revelation printed in little words, was a simple quote from Frank Herbert’s Dune.
“The mystery of life isn’t a problem to solve, but a reality to experience.”
It felt like I had finally woken up.
Sitting stunned, I was immediately filled with flashes of significant moments from my past. Moving to Vietnam at 21. Breaking my ankle at 12. Learning how to ski in metres of snow in Hokkaido. Missing trains. Getting sunburnt diving in the Philippines. My last heartbreak. Trekking to Annapurna Basecamp. Crying on planes. The very first time I met Rackley in Wanaka. Our devastation when I got sick 1.5 years later.
And one of my favourite memories to this day: Sailing down the Tonlé Sap River in Phnom Penh, grateful and excited for life for the first time in a very long time, grinning and waving back at the excited little kids running down to the river banks to wave hello.
Maybe the meaning of life isn’t a question that needs an answer. Perhaps it’s not even the question to be asking. It isn’t a riddle or the key to happiness. (If anything, this last year has shown me that it’s the key to unhappiness — or perhaps, a career in philosophy.)
It turns out, I don’t need an answer. It simply was never the right question to be asking.
So instead, I’ll let life’s moments — beautiful, devastating, extraordinary, mundane and everything in between — come and go. I’ll live, present within them, and these moments and memories will live for as long as I live. And one day, when it’s my time, they will die along with me. Nothing more and nothing less.
And finally, that is enough for me.