If life has a meaning, then what can it be? Before we can discuss this question, we may need to clarify what I mean by “meaning of life”. I think a simple question to clarify what I mean by the “meaning of life” is: What am I here for?
When I was a teen, there was no internet and certainly no smart phones. No convenient video games for me and my friends to play all day long. Therefore, we had time to ask silly questions, and one of them was: What was the meaning of life? When this question came up, I often replied that whoever brought it up must not be very happy. People probably would not care much about the meaning of life if they happily lived every day.
However, I knew the question was not answered yet. If I was in distress, perhaps in great sorrow, it would seem natural for me to ask: Why was I here to suffer? What was I here for? That sounded reasonable to me. However, could I really find someone who happily live every day and tell me that he or she never thought about the same question: What am I here for?
I heard a story about a god who offended a greater god. The greater god punished him and asked him to go to a mountain. There he was asked to roll a huge stone to the top of the mountain. The smaller god thought that was an easy punishment. He was strong and rolling up the stone was easy. Then he rolled the stone up to the mountain top, smiling, only then he discovered the truth. The mountain had a pointy top. The huge stone could not stay there. It rolled downhill right away. He would have to go downhill, rolled up the stone to the top again, but then watching it rolled downhill, and he had to do the rolling all over again. This was an eternal punishment!
Was this the same as our life, that we perpetually did the same thing over and over again without knowing why we were even here?
