MEANING OF LIFE
My Old Man’s group met in McDonald’s this morning. Usually I can’t remember anything we have said. All I remember is the good feeling of sitting together and listening to each other and saying whatever comes into my mind.
But yesterday the discussion started out by Paul asking us what we thought was the meaning of life. That shouldn’t have been a tough question. We are all in our very late 70’s and 80’s. By now, if we are ever going to, we should know the meaning of life. But it turned out that some of us had no idea and others, including me, had an idea that they weren’t too certain about. Phil referred us to Sapiens by Harari. The meaning of life is the stories we live by. My thought, which seems a little nuts when I say it out loud, is that there is no meaning of life. There is just the long process of evolution, that starting from a warm soup led to all the forms of life on earth, vegetable, tree, bug and humans. Humans have evolved into creatures who seek to be aware of where they are and what they need to know to survive which has led to an insatiable drive to understand everything. Our need to know leads to the the conclusion that we can know everything including the meaning of life. For me meaning is within our DNA and doesn’t exist outside of our DNA. There is no ultimate meaning of life, just the meanings we create and live within, our imagined human bubble, in which we live, move and have our meaning.
Pretty profound, but not profound enough to get anyone else’s attention or to keep us from moving on to discussing hearing aids or the nuttiness of Trump.
But what I remember most was that we had a good time sitting together, regardless of the meaning of life, which may be the meaning of life.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 