We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep…Is the reality we know a reality imposed to us by nature? Is the reality and the m
eaning of life a creation of men, such as music, or love or colors. Are we - and all living beings - just survival machines, blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes, Are we incapable of knowing beyond the frames imposed to us by nature?
Is there any significance for life in a Universe of billions of stars that ignore us? Is there any significance for life in an Universe whose dimensions and nature overcome our understanding?
When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity that lies before and after it, when I consider the little space I fill and I see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I am ignorant, and which know me not, I rest frightened, and astonished, for there is no reason why I should be here rather than there. Why now rather than then? Who has put me here? By whose order and direction have this place and time have been ascribed to me?
"Life is too short"
“Life is too short to spend your precious time trying to convince a person who wants to live in gloom and doom otherwise. Give lifting that person yur best shot, but don't hang around long enough for his or her bad attitude to pull you down. Instead, surround yourself with optimistic people." Life is too short not to make the best and the most of everything that comes your way everyday. Forgive, forget.Bear with the faults of others as you would have them bear with yours. Be patient and understanding. Life is too short to be malicious.
The brevity of life is one of the more common themes of human existential thought. There is authentic poetry in many ancient reflections on this brevity, and the inevitability of death and nothingness.
Love gives meaning to our lives – as do friendship, or art or faith in God. These are fac
tors of true happiness, of inner peace, of feelings of harmony, allowing meaning to our existence.
But there is the other side. There is the cruelty of life, the pain, the evil, not to talk of death. They are the hidden tigers, ambushed and ready to attack the imprudent, to use an image present in the Buddhist Scriptures.
Is between these pendulums - the positive, the one that gives happiness and meaning, and the negative - that our lives are lived. And when we meditate about all that, we arrive at a diverse and disagreeing set of thoughts about the meaning and purpose of life.
A life without love and friendship is a meaningless life. The meaning of life is, largely, given by love and friendship. Life is sown with those miracles that only people who love can expect.
The meaning of life resides in joy and the feelings of harmony connected to happiness; without happiness, life loses meaning. Happiness is at the heart of our lives and our demand for a meaning. One great question underlies our experience, whether we think about it consciously or not: What is the purpose of life? I believe that the purpose of life is to be happy. From the moment of birth, every human being wants happiness and does not want to suffer. From the very core of our being we simply desire contentment. Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence becomes a mad lamentable experiment.
Everybody is always talking about it, but to me it seems that nobody sees the actual significance of that statement: "Life seems to fly by....."
In the years of our youth it does not seem to affect us too much. Life seems interesting and our daily excursions into the New and the Unknown keep us occupied and our days are filled with adventures. But what about later? Every one of us has to grow up and face the burden of so-called Reality. This often means something different to each one of us, but everybody faces the basic struggles. Financial nightmares, emotional stress, inferior friendships and so on.What usually happens is that we get lost in those struggles while making them the most important part of our lives. We are so preoccupied in solving the puzzles of our everyday living that it turns into an ongoing battle repeating itself over and over. It seems to have neither a beginning nor an end. I believe that pretty much sums up the reason for all those years passing us by like flimsy cardboard boxes filled with unrealized dreams and unsolved problems.
| If you try to be honest with yourself and examine the past years objectively, you might come to the same conclusion. You might have had some financial success or even have fallen in love with the person you have always been waiting for. Maybe you are one of the lucky ones and emotional stress and financial burdens do not play a big role in your life. But most of the time one problem replaces another. For instance not having enough money usually creates as many worries as having more than you need. Being "burdened" by excess financial resources means to finding proper investment strategies. In a growing but unstable local economy and world market that can be quite challenging and often takes up a substantial amount of time. And even when you have created a portfolio that suits your needs, there is the matter of maintaining it properly and even that does not give you any insurance that your money is still going to be there the next day.Surely at this point I am not solving any mysteries or telling you anything you do not already know. That leaves us with the original question. Why is it, then, that no matter how fulfilled or unfulfilled, exciting or boring, stressful or relaxing our lives are, there always remains that magical place in the far corner of our existence, filled with anxiety and fear? Some of us might not recognize it, others might be able to ignore it. But for many people it becomes the driving force of their lives. In my opinion these feelings result from a realization that we are not able to control everything that is going on in our lives. We have to admit to ourselves that we are not strong enough, that we do not posses enough power and vision to understand our existence completely and therefore much that will happen to us is left to chance. And correct you are. How can human beings that made material and temporary objects the "Holy Grail" of their search through life, measuring self-worth in dollars and cents, fighting each other for rewards that will seep through their hands like the sands of time, even begin to hope that they will be able to manipulate anything outside their own capacity of understanding. This limited environment that we have created for ourselves prohibits us from functioning to the fullest extend of our capabilities. We have not been designed for such a limited application, like a child locked up in a dark room all his life with only one task taught to him. No matter how promising his capabilities might have been, he would grow old much faster than intended and his whole world would revolve around the only task it knows. Wasting our potential on daily chores, worries and fears is like using a super computer exclusively as a word processor. If we ever want to be completely happy and fulfilled, if we ever want to enjoy every single second of the day, we have to break out of these chains of incarceration. Our much limited intelligence causes the destruction of biological environment worldwide and is the main reason for all the violence, oppression and self destruction we are faced with on a daily basis. It ultimately is the cause for our unhappiness because deep inside we know that this is not the world we are supposed to live in. Our ideal world is a world of Love and Understanding. A world of unlimited spiritual growth. Scientific research shows that at this point of our spiritual and physical evolution we are only using 10% of our brain capacity consciously. Are we constructed falsely? No! Why is it then that we are not using so much of our true potential? Clearly it is because 10% is all we need to support the mediocre task we are presenting our brain with. We are supposed to be beautiful, spiritual beings with the rest of the earth at our command. But we find ourselves barely above the intelligence level of animals. Fighting daily battles, nation against nation and man against man. Even our own families are subjected to this rage. We have created more violence in our world than the animal kingdom ever will.At least animals use and display violence for a reason. Humans are the only creatures committing senseless acts on a continuous basis, destroying their own habitat as they go along.How intelligent is that? I realize that this is a gloomy picture I am painting. Awakening to the fact that our earth is just a tiny speck somewhere in the universe, controlled and abused by human beings. Being at the mercy of natural forces that we have not the slightest control over and finding ourselves locked in a dimension that at best offers little more than temporary happiness and the gift of living, may it only be for a brief moment in the grand illusion of history. Is this a perspective we are stuck with? Is this the real and undivided truth of our existence, all we can hope for? No way, my friend. You have been given choices. It is up to you to make the right ones.Hopefully you are not so narrow-minded as to believe that this earth and the universe surrounding it was created by chance. Billions of years ago a "Bang" and from then on everything kind of developed by itself. That does not sound very reasonable, does it? Everything has a purpose, every grain of sand, every rock has its own special place of existence. Even if evolution has happened the way it is described in scientific publications of the world, there must be a reason for how it came to pass. I am not a person that believes easily. I, like so many others, challenge every bit of information that is placed in front of me. But even I must admit that behind all that has happened, behind all creation there must be a guiding forcecontrolling and manipulating these powers. I am convinced and believe with all my heart that this guiding force is God. |
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