by Emily Elizabeth Ellis

Created on: March 22, 2008

A few months ago, in the middle of writing my book, I stopped. I suddenly couldn't speak - I suddenly looked at the computer screen in front of me and thought, "Why? Does it really mean anything?"

I couldn't write anymore for a while after that.

What is it about humans? Why do we always have to have a meaning? When we are young, and our parents tell us to eat our vegetables, to make our beds, to comb our hair, to not talk to strangers, we all ask the same thing: "Why?" When we are students in school, studying a subject we don't like, we gripe and ask the teacher till she wants to wring our neck: "Why?" When someone does something to us that is unusual - they bring us a gift for no reason at all, or they break our hearts with no good motive - what do we ask? You guessed it. "WHY?"

People have wanted a reason for everything for as long as we have been people. We look at the earth and all its wonders and we imagine there MUST be a reason for it all. There has to be. How could it all be here, how could it all be so breathtaking, how could it touch us so, if there wasn't a meaning? We live our lives as if we were born to be great, as if we are here for a purpose, as if our little existences were actually of some significance in this crushingly massive universe. We look at disasters and sorrows and we want something to blame, we want there to be a reason for it, we want there to be a meaning - we like things better when there is meaning. We cannot fully appreciate a book, a movie, a poem, a song, or a painting until we start to discover what the author/director/poet/singer/artist MEANT by it. And we cannot function once we start to lose sight of meaning - whatever it is.

And what is it? No one really knows. People find meaning in different ways. I find meaning in my faith, by believing that there is a reason I am here, that the people I meet day to day are not simply random, that the decisions I make are all working together to mold me into the person I am meant to be. Honestly, I think there are a lot of people who think like that. It helps me have hope that bad things will eventually give way to good, and that I will not reach the end of my life and look back and feel dissatisfied. I believe that there is meaning in life; otherwise, we wouldn't want it so much.

What the meaning is, though - that you have to discover on your own.

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