The Meaning of Life

Ever since the beginning of time the human race has spent countless hours sitting around, chin resting on fist purely to think about why exactly we've been placed here on this ball of iron and water. I too, as a human being, have spent at least 10 minutes of my life pondering over this and these are my conclusions:

An atheist (AKA a close-minded know-it-all) would believe that the meaning of life is to simply exist. We are here by chance and therefore that is our purpose. To be a part of that one-off.

A person bound by religion (AKA a close-minded know-it-all) would believe that we are a reflection of god and our ultimate purpose is to please him/her/it/them in whatever way we have been 'told' to do so.

These are the two simplest philosophies. But it would be extremely boring to look at just two of them, so let's take a look at loads.

An Australian would think that life is all about not giving a fuck. It's about realising that a spider or some other critter might give them a lethal dose of something at any point of any day, and so fear should not be accepted and instead an aura of "Crikey those critters have a harsh bite. Oh shit, Sheila, I've only gone and become paralysed. Crack open a beer for us, would ya?"

A German would think that getting as much done as possible to the best quality conceivable is what life is about. Second best is not good enough for the Germans. They have to be the most efficient and remain on top of the best automotive engineers in the world. Also a suit is essential to life. It's the Mjolnir to their Spartan 117.

A Frenchman would believe that doing the exact opposite to the Germans is what life is all about. Doing nothing is their forte. "Oh non! Il n'ya pas une baguette en le boulangerie! Vite vite! Put ze whole country on strike!" You wouldn't believe how often that happens.

A Chinaman would look at the world and see something to conquer. Their natural instinct is to take over the world. They're already on their way to completely buying out Africa and their making their way through South America as well. It's slowly happening.

A Brit's outlook on life seems to be pretty grim. According to our newspapers we are rife with teenage pregnancy and bad weather. "Christ! We haven't had rain in like three weeks! The whole country will burn up!" And then it rained for forty days and forty nights, but Thames Water was still on hosepipe ban. "These youths are an abomination to society!" So you see what I mean? A Brit's version of life is to get through it by complaining and getting things banned/unbanned or otherwise jailed. I'm soon expecting there to be a total ban on weather and government.

An American sees life as a huge cheeseburger. There is all the stuff that everybody sees on the outside with the tasty looking bun, but then we realise that it is a totally different story on the inside when every flavour in the world has been bunged inside to make a totally dysfunctional, but wonderfully diverse place to be where people appear to be happy. Or not. I don't know, I've never been to the place.

An extremist Muslim just wants to do his god proud by blowing himself up, killing as many infidels as possible. Naturally a regular Muslim would see the world like any other follower of faith, just so I don't look too judgemental.

An extremist Christian wants to spread the word of god by any means. In fact, they cause a lot of wars. A LOT. Most wars of all time have been to do with a Christian of great power wanting to conquer some land or eradicate another religion in their territory or whatever. Again, a regular Christian would blah blah.

An extremist Buddhist would step out of the way of the wars caused by religion and then set about the most peaceful kind of violence ever. That being that instead of killing other people, they would simply set themselves on fire and run around a bit.

If your view on life fits into any of these categories, congratulations. You are officially a stereotype. If any of you are offended because one of these descriptions fits you and you don't like that then don't give me grief. I don't make these stereotypes and nor do I enforce them. Sure I just wrote loads of stuff about them but shush.

Anyway, back to the matter at hand. Surely this should be about what I think the actual meaning of life is. I can only really say this. Life is exactly what you make of it. You only have one chance at it (unless of course, you are Ezio Auditore and your distant grandson can take over your memories and control you for a while... over and over... and over and over) so you might as well get it right. Even reincarnation states that you've got to have had a pretty good crack at your first life to have a good second one, so that's surely more incentive. The fact of the matter is, I am deadly scared that there is simply nothing after life, so you may as well make sure that the life you are living in this moment is the best you can have. If you're completely miserable, then you're doing it wrong. Lighten up a little.

That's not really the meaning of life though is it? A great metaphor is if god gives you lemons, then you make lemonade. You take what you get and you make something amazing from it. That's what life is really about, isn't it? It's not about answering the great questions or destroying other lives to promote your god or anything like the stuff I mentioned above. It is your life, and therefore is it also your choice on how to live it. So go on, have a shot, see if you can hit the target.

Less humour but more hard-hitting stuff this time round from the most cliché guy since Ghandi. An ironic comparison if there were ever any.

See you soon.