Meaning of Life

Nick Haviaras
English III op II
Miss Kreps
February 8, 2013
The Meaning of Life
What is the meaning of life? The answer to this question has sought over since mankind became capable of exercising their brain capacity past a level of primal instinct. In general life is rather meaningless, we all simply exist together on this planet. But before one dwells on the pointlessness of human existence, they should think about the purpose of each individual person in our society. We create goals for ourselves; we all have a role to play in our society. In a sense, we choose our future and in doing so, give ourselves a purpose to live. The purpose of human existence in general may be absent, but in our society and through our goals and achievements, I believe each individual creates their own purpose.
Through one question I realized this great truth: what do you want to be when you grow up? For the longest time, I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up. What did it matter to me anyway? I was a kid (well, I suppose I still am) and didn’t like any of the generic jobs they told us about in elementary school. Police force, teachers, fireman, none of them interested me. Then, in middle school, my life changed, a lot. I got completely new friends, after the old ones left me behind. I slowly started to become more and more enclosed, I spent most of my time out of school alone. As I developed into this over-dramatic teenage state, life suddenly became meaningless. I would often find myself sitting bored in my room, mindlessly surfing the internet or playing videogames. I slowly started to hate it; it was like I could feel my brain melting inside my head. I needed to find a more constructive hobby, and so I found myself musical instruments and started creating more and more music every day.
Music became my life and from then on, I knew that my goal, the meaning of my life, was to become a musician. I believe that life was meant to be enjoyed; nobody wants to spend their life in a dead end job. After all, just how much meaning is in an unhappy life? Just ask Monty Python’s John Cleese, who states, “If I had not gone into Monty Python, I probably would have stuck to my original plan to graduate and become a chartered accountant, or perhaps a barrister lawyer, and gotten a nice house in the suburbs with a nice wife and kids, and gotten a country club membership, and then I would have killed myself.” I find this quote strongly inspiring because instead of choosing a highly respectable, well paying job and living a comfortable life, he choose to work with some of most popular men to ever wear woman’s clothing. Comedy is what he finds gives meaning to his life, and although his second choices would have been nice, Cleese didn’t find as much value in them as he did in Monty Python.
Perhaps life itself is meaningless, but I believe it doesn’t have to be. I believe that a happy life is a meaningful one.
I believe that mankind may not collectively have a reason for existence or a common goal, but each individual certainly does. I believe that each and every person has to create their own reason to live, instead of waiting for that reason to come to them, or they must just find themselves waiting forever.