by Ayodele Abbis

Created on: August 05, 2009   Last Updated: August 06, 2009

To contemplate the meaning of life is to commence an adventure into the world of the unknown, but unlike fantasy and imagination, what you find is a reality that is not your own creation.

Life is not a bed of roses. Life is what you make of it. Life is just a chance to grow a soul. Life on earth is born of a woman. Life is a succession of moments, to live each one is to succeed. There are millions of quotes on what life is, and a million more on what it is made of, but really, none of these quotes satisfy the perennial curiosity inside. You can define life in a million ways, it would still not answer the question, what is the meaning of life.

There is however, one point on which everyone agree- the way in which life is lived. Everyone agrees that a life lived for others is more worthwhile than a life spent in selfishness. On this same point is crested the pristine, primal, unpolluted desire of man to be happy.

Life really is the way you see it. I mean, the way you see it is the way you live it, and it has been so designed in such a way that you must see something! There is no living without a reason! Even those who live recklessly have something they see, nonchalance! The joys, pains, ups and downs, love, loving, pursuits, attaining are all what make life worthy of contemplation, yet they still don't tell us the meaning of life.

There has to be a meaning to life; the pursuit of happiness, the loneliness we feel when we eventually get what we want, the emptiness of achievement, the constant longing for more, the paradoxical futility of passion, the joy and pain of love and loving, the bitterness of death, the pain of dying. This life is a mystery! And like one great philosopher said, life is mystery to be lived rather than a riddle to be solved

Summarily, life is to be lived. We are living it, that is why we are thinking about what it is. It must have a meaning. A universal meaning, a satisfying meaning that once you discover it, you live in perpetual freedom and happiness.

Till then, we are confined to this world of living it the way it comes, and perhaps the true meaning of life is realising it is a journey and we really have a destination

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