by Payyan

Created on: December 03, 2009   Last Updated: December 05, 2009

Meaning of Life

The answer to the question in the title may vary depending on the subject and the seeker's angle and view point. But before digging deep, let us try to know what we are looking for.

Life - after all, what is life?

Just turn around, you will find a handful of magazines and news papers around you and in each of these publications there will be at least one article about life.

What is life?

Meaning of life?

How to win life?

How to be happy in life?

I heard the story of one author who wrote the book titled "How to be happy in life" took his life at the age of 38. May be his book did not do well in the market and so he was unhappy. There are people who claim that they can help others to find fortune and become millionaires. But still I can not understand why they do not use that fortune and become millionaires.

I remember the story of a Pastor, who came to the village church to deliver his spiritual speech. But he could not find the way to church. He asked the man near the shop.

"Son, can you show me the way to church?"

The man explained the way. Then with a feeling of seeing an outlander he asked.

"Why are you going to church?"

"I have a spiritual lecture to deliver."

"What about that?" The man asked.

"The way to heaven."

The man laughed aloud and said, "You don't even know the way to the church, then how you are going to teach others the way to heaven?"

Coming back to our subject in title, the meaning of life largely depends on the way we define it. I am least interested in the homeostasis, metabolic and reproductive definition of biology. It is not hard for any one to pile up hundreds of definitions from philosophic thinkers or literature geniuses.

"Life is a useless disturbance in the exquisite tranquility of nothingness." A real pessimistic definition from the German pessimist Arthur Schopenhauer.

"Life is a story told by an idiot, full of sound and furious, signifying nothing." But ask, who is the idiot? You and me, William Shakespeare did not say that.

"Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans". It was true for one of the founding members of 'The Beatles', John Lennon, who lost his life just like loose sand seeping between fingers.

"Life is a flower for which love is the honey." No doubt, truly romantic. The definition is from Victor Hugo, an exponent of Romantic Movement in France.

I like the definition of Ambrose Bierce, who wrote in his 'The Devil's Dictionary' that "life is spiritual pickle preserving the body

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