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Yesterday a patient told me he had been feeling depressed ever since he realised he was going to die. “We know that everything is going to disappear (the world, the sun, the universe, everything human beings have ever made), so what’s the point of living? Why live at all? It frightens me and it gets me down. I can’t get through a single day without thinking about death.”
It’s true that when you really ask yourself what the meaning of your life is, it can make your head spin. But unlike my patient, I’m not frightened by the fact that everything is fleeting and that everything disappears. Quite the opposite: I find it reassuring!
I tell myself: all of this is fleeting, and everything we do will disappear, so why worry? Nothing really matters, it’s all a game, so let’s enjoy ourselves, since this life won’t last, and neither will this world! This life is a gift, and it’s meant to be lived!
Life, life, life is not stupid. Life is not empty, and it is not without reason.
We only need to look at nature. Take the human body: it is simply incredible. Everything is in its place, everything works perfectly so that we can live in this world, act, feel, taste, see and understand. When you think about it, the human body is truly fascinating: every organ has its role, the hormones, the cells… It is an absolutely perfect organisation, so complex to us that we still haven’t finished exploring and understanding it. Then there are plants: a flower, how wonderful! Every flower is beautiful, even the simplest one that lasts only a day; if you really look at it, it is fascinating. And animals, in all their diversity, each with its place in the food chain. This extraordinary nature, where everything has a reason to exist: trees that communicate through their roots, fungi, the pollen of flowers… Everything is absolutely perfect, the balance is flawless. The whole of nature, of which human beings are a part, is a work of such beauty and perfection that it goes beyond understanding.
And the life that created all of this is supposed to be stupid, meaningless? How can anyone believe such a thing? I don’t believe in God, but it is impossible not to see this intelligence of life that is right there before our eyes at every moment, creating this world every single second!
A flower is short-lived, a butterfly lives for a day, and yet they are utterly magnificent, of a beauty beyond words and a complexity we struggle to explain: complex to us, yet simple for the intelligence that is life.
So why? What is the meaning of it all?
Animals and plants simply are, and they play the role life has given them to the full. We don’t. And yet we have something they don’t: consciousness, and with it the ability to question things, to reflect and to create. So how can we call into question a life so perfect, so harmonious and so generous? How can we doubt that it has meaning?
I think we often look at the problem the wrong way round. We don’t ask ourselves the right questions, because we ask them from one particular point of view: our own, that of an individual human being, shut away inside an individual vision of life. From there, it is impossible to understand the meaning of our life. We simply need to change our point of view and step outside the human condition as we were taught it: that of an individual living in a society of their own making. Taking life’s point of view forces us to see ourselves as part of life, not as a unique individual separate from everything else.
And, paradoxically, our lives don’t all have the same meaning: there is a universal reason, the same for everyone, and an individual reason, different for each of us.
So each of us has to find the meaning of our own life. What? You’d like someone to tell you? You’d like everything explained to you?
But that would be far too easy: there would be no game left, nothing to discover for ourselves. We are the ones who make things too serious. Knowing that all of this will disappear should give us a clue… helloooo!!!! It’s a game! Don’t take yourself too seriously, and open up to life. It’s just waiting for you to come and play!
