I still remember the day I discovered I would eventually die. I was just a boy staying at my aunt’s house. There was a movie on the television where one of the characters was having a discussion with her relative about death. I don’t remember exactly what transpired in the movie, but I remember asking my aunt if one day I would die as well. She said, “Yes” and I began crying. I was devastated, and it took some consoling before I was able to move on and simply be a kid again. I moved on but the realization stayed with me.

As years passed I became interested in that incident, and I began asking myself what made me continue to go on living despite knowing that it would all come to an end. Surely the realization of death was an intense existential experience for me, but how was it not completely devastating, devastating to the point where continuing to live was pointless? After all, what would be the point if everything came to an end? What was the meaning?

Having a Catholic upbringing many people around me had an answer: things don’t end, your life continues in heaven (if one is “good” enough of course). I can still hear my grandma’s voice telling me when I die I would see the entire family again, they would all be waiting for me; and watching the movie “Ghost” as a kid staring Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore seemed to confirm what she said.

The belief in heaven, probably more than anything, delayed my rejection of Catholicism. It is not that I have completely rejected the belief in one day again being with those one is closest to after death, but the idea of a heaven, of a “life” after death, always seemed too convenient of a belief when it came to answering questions about the meaning of life.

Human beings want meaning, and human beings want a purpose. As Viktor Frankl, the founder of logo-therapy stated, “Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human.” People want a reason to live and a reason to get up in the morning.

A few months ago a friend of mine told me about his own struggle to do just that, to get up in the morning, to have a purpose in life. The question was not new to me, but it had been awhile since I asked it to myself so directly. And so I asked myself, “Why do I get up in the morning? What is the meaning of life?

There is certainly truth to the fact that people want meaning in their lives or want their life to be meaningful, but I also feel that having to ask the question in the first place almost misses the point. Though the question itself, “What is the meaning of life,” is important, it also seems to me there is a way in which asking the question already betrays the answer or the possibility of finding one. Is not life, that of simply feeling alive, innately meaningful?

When one looks at trees, rivers, oceans, animals, stars, the sun and moon, etc. one realizes that there is no need for any of it, and yet they are; there is no ultimate purpose dependent on things existing as opposed to not existing; there is no need for any of it and yet things are. There may be no ultimate meaning, but perhaps that is what makes everything the more wondrous. All things will eventually pass away and yet all things are anyway. Life is meaningful because it is life.

Asking what makes life meaningful is different from asking what the meaning of life is. The meaning of life is simply to live, but the first question is not easier to answer. That is because one often assumes it depends on what one chooses to do. To answer the first question one assumes that something must be done in order to give life purpose. But the answer should be simpler; life makes life meaningful.

Of course people have to do things to live; one has to eat and drink, have shelter, create social bonds, but one almost always looks at these activities as something one has to “get out of the way first” so that one is free to do something more meaningful and have a “true” purpose instead of finding such activities to be innately satisfying because they sustain one’s life. I am not arguing against having goals, careers, or desires, but there should be an explicit understanding that doing so will probably not give one the lasting satisfaction one seeks; I suspect that simply feeling alive is the only thing that can do that.

One might be initially skeptical of the satisfaction that comes from simply feeling one’s sense of being alive, but if one can do it, he or she realizes that it is enough. A lot of people do not operate from that viewpoint; a majority of people lose contact with that sense of aliveness because most people  become alienated from his or her feelings and from being able to express those feelings either to others or first importantly to one’s self.

Individuals must chose to do something, but the angle from which one operates and choses to do something should be redirected so that what one does stems from a life that one feels to be innately meaningful as opposed to trying to make life meaningful by doing a number of things.

I’ve had a lot of goals in my life, most of them I’ve accomplished, but many of them never gave me the satisfaction I expected. It’s the same for many people I know and have talked to, and many people I’ve read about.

If one reads accounts of famous individuals who left great contributions to society, one might be surprised to learn how at the end of their lives, many of them were dissatisfied or found their accomplishments to be pointless. Many famous people in fact ended up feeling like they did nothing. There is a vast trove of cultural and technological achievements, but most of it has truly been unnecessary, and that is because none of it can ever be as innately satisfying as simply being.

I have come across the writings or teachings of some spiritual people who have laughed off or downplayed many of the cultural and scientific achievements of society. At first I simply thought they were philistines. Now I feel that it is not that they reject culture, science, or the arts, but that they have an innate understanding that what many people attempt to gain through doing and achieving in such areas will not give them what they are looking for.

Almost all of what a person tries to accomplish is often done because he or she thinks that doing so will fill that hole in their life, or will give life meaning. Increasingly I’ve come to realize that it has not been what I’ve done or what I’ve accomplished that’s been satisfying, but how I’ve chosen to be from moment to moment, and I try to keep that in mind as I plan what to do next.