The lie that is The Meaning Of Life

As I sit alone tonight at home, my house empty now that my husband is at work on his night shift, I find my mind thinking about the meaning of life.

Most would find comfort in religion.  God put me here for a reason therefore I can take comfort in knowing that I have a purpose from a higher power.  If you think about all the planets, stars, galaxies that exist in our universe, even if there is a higher power I would ask one to consider how a singular entity would have time to worry about a planet that essentially amounts to an electron on the branch of an apple tree. I believe in a higher power but I struggle to see how that higher power does anything other than watch his ants in their ant colony.

I will take Richard Dawkin's view that when you remove religion you have to find your own meaning in life.  But when you are approaching thirty, have no job and relatively little to show for you life other than making it to marriage without a couple of kids hanging off your legs it starts to get very hard to find a meaning that would make you happy.

There is always the approach that the marketing companies would have you take and that you are here to consume and make someone else that little bit richer.  If I am to believe everything they say then I should go and buy the latest computer, MP3 player, TV, gaming system etc. and that should fill the void that having a meaning to life would normally fill.  Yet as I sit surrounded by these items I feel a little bit more empty because I know these items take me a little bit further away from the toil that is supporting myself, growing my own food and supporting my own life.  In essence a true bond with the land that I think I deep down desire.  This pitch is disposable (if something breaks why not buy another one?) and therefore the void in my heart grows just a little bit more with each item I buy.

I have always felt that people of generations past didn't feel depressed because they were so busy working to stay alive there wasn't time to stop and think about life.  Not when you have to grow a years worth of food in a couple of months, make sure you have enough wood for the fire during winter and care for the animals that made your life easier.  Take that away and the brain now has to entertain itself.  I sometimes fail to see how that can be a good thing.

Well I guess I could look to family.  But when you live in different country to your family it seems hard to find that as an excuse for the meaning of life.  And anyway, why should I put faith in another human to keep me on this planet?  I could have my own child but then would I perhaps become one of those mums who never lets their kid do anything and lives their dreams through their child, the dreams they wish their own parents had let them live.  There is so much I wish I could do now but I know that my chance for it is long past because my adult body could not relearn the necessary flexibility or strength needed.

I envy my husband.  He knows his role in life.  His only real desire is to be a good husband.  I know this is his heart.  He would be happy to live a nice simple life, in the same house, with the same friends, and just take pride in raising a couple of children.  A life with no real goals but its a life he would be content with.  He has no real aspirations of greatness, just a need to provide for a family and to be a father.  My husband is not an unintelligent man, he is just a man who wants and needs a simple life.  So I envy that he needs so little to be happy.

There is also the evolutionary meaning of life.  This is perhaps the most depressing one, but probably the most truthful one.  There is no meaning other than to reproduce and pass my genes on to another generation, there by perhaps strengthening the genetics of the human race as a whole.  Why have life if there is no meaning for it?  I guess life is just a random chance event that has now occurred and exists on this planet we call home.

So if life is nothing more than dumb luck and here for no special reason, I understand why so many cling to the illusion of a god.  The alternative is crushingly depressing.