After I drop my youngest guy off at his elementary, I find that in the time it takes to drive home is when I have some of my deepest thoughts. If you can even bother calling thoughts that I have…deep. There’s something about early-ish mornings, rush hour traffic and lack of caffeine that make for dangerous thinking conditions.
I’ve been wondering a lot lately about the why factor. Well, that’s what I’m calling it, for now.
See, life has never been easy. Sure, there are some great things that come out of it-fun times, beautiful children, nice husband and those are all fabulous and I’m very grateful. But the struggles sometimes detract from the positives, no matter how hard I try not to let them.
We live our worker ant lives, some of us barely making it. There are wars, natural disasters, unnatural disasters sometimes literally exploding all around us. Homelessness, for my lifetime, is at an all time high and growing higher by the moment. Displaced has become a common word associated with almost everything to do with life.
FOR WHAT?
In our youth, it was fun. Carefree.
Then we GROW UP. We become like our parents-married with children. We hope that the future really is golden.
But, based on observing those I know who are supposedly in the midst of their “golden years”, our youth was really more golden. Because, the older we get, the gold looks like it becomes more tarnished.
Yes, we have learning experiences, because isn’t life just one big one? Yes, we have moments and memories, they are supposed to last a lifetime. Yes, we live, laugh and love, which makes those memories and aids in the learning experiences.
BUT WHY?
These learning experiences? What are they for? What do we do with them because it seems that once we are done accumulating them, that means we’re dead.
AND THEN WHAT?
I keep thinking that if I wasn’t agnostic, if I didn’t constantly question, the answer would be more obvious or satisfying.
But, I do question. I do doubt. I do wonder.
No one seems to have definitive answers.
I need definitive, which I suppose it why I’m agnostic to begin with.
I try to open my heart and mind in order to believe. I can’t. It’s too difficult without proof.
I try to just accept the fact that this is how it is, life is life.
Yet, like a song stuck in my head, those questions and thoughts keeps ricocheting around.
Why? Why am I questioning the whole freaking meaning of life? Like, obsessively. I thought I was supposed to do this when I was younger and then get over it.
Meanwhile, I’m watching the deterioration of some people I love as well as the world I love.
I consider the mess of a legacy we are leaving to our children.
I think about growing old and infirm.
I am amazed by how quickly time gets away from us.
And I worry that I will never accomplish anything between now and death. Yes, I know children are an accomplishment but that’s not what I mean.
I’m having a really hard time dealing with it, I guess.
It just keeps leading me back to the same question…
WHAT IS THE POINT OF ALL THIS?
And the part about it that bugs me most is…
I wonder if there is even an answer.
I think I must have left a Facebook comment. And why doesn’t spellcheck recognize the word ‘Facebook’? Or ‘spellcheck’, for that matter?
And what IS the meaning of life?
We are the Universe come to recognize itself, admire itself, Love itself. But to what purpose?
Does it all just fade to black? Do we just ‘poof’ out of existence? Or do we awake behind another pair of eyes, in anther place and time? In another universe? Are we still who we were? Or someone completely different?
And does the Universe care?
lceel´s last blog post ..Blast from the past
Per Douglas Adams, the answer is 42…now we just have to figure out the right question…
Being that I’m not agnostic and I have a tremendous amount of faith I think my answer is way different than what you would accept.
Jennifer´s last blog post ..Coming home
I’m not agnostic, but not particularly religious either. I do believe in something greater though.
For me, it’s more about the natural laws of the universe, you know – like the way the seasons automatically know how and when to change, how the leaves on the trees change color and then shed themselves before winter, and the way everything seems to go through a natural progression of death and rebirth. Perhaps it’s symbolic to life, perhaps I’m a little too idealistic, but I belive everything has a way of coming full circle.
That…is life, to me anyway.
It’s important to question, Melissa, and I hope you find the answers you’re looking for.
My constant fall-back when I question life and the meanings and what-have-you is that nothing ever completely disappears. All energy, all matter, EVERYthing continues to exist in some form or another.
Burn a log; you’ve got ashes that blow into the wind and eventually become the earth.
Pop a balloon; the air disperses into the atmosphere, becoming the wind, breathed in by animals and absorbed by vegetation.
Stop a heart from beating; the physical body never truly disappears, so why should the all-important soul that powers our every movement and thought?
Tracey – JustAnotherMommyBlog´s last blog post ..Like- fer sherr!
As some would say, it’s not the destination, but the journey that is important. Are you enjoying yourself now; are you happy now? If not – fix that! You don’t always have to be planning for the next thing – people just make you think so – especially in social media. I find most of their posts mentally exhausting, much less imagining all the constant networking they’re doing. Be natural, do what you like, enjoy the journey. Isn’t that far better than working toward something may not necessarily bring you much happiness, just a line on your resume? Who I am is important; not what I do.
Pop and Ice´s last blog post ..Nobody Wants to Play with You
When I was an agnostic, Mel, I would say, “life is whatever you make of it; it can have as little or as much meaning as you want it to have.”
I was very much like you and the fact that I worked as a journalist for so many years did nothing but fuel my questioning nature. It’s good to question, it’s good to use your mind and learn all you can.
As hard as this may be for you to accept, the truth is, you can’t know everything or have all the answers you seek. Being an agnostic puts you in a kind of limbo; your questioning nature, at times, will push you into thinking that there is no god; at others, your heart will tell you that there must be something more, there must be a divine force at work.
Some things, you simply have to take on faith. Does that mean you should stop questioning, stop trying to learn? No, absolutely not.
I still think about those questions. I would still like answers, too, but I can live without them. Faith has given me a peace of mind I never knew as an agnostic. It took a very traumatic event in my life to bring me back to faith. I hope you arrive there without the same anguish.
PJ Lincoln´s last blog post ..Hooking Your Reader