THE MEANING OF LIFE

I woke up this morning dreaming about a helicopter crashing after spinning out of control. Freudians may ascribe some deep psychological meaning to this dream. To me however, it had two causes: I was eating sweet things very late at night and last night I watched 2 Fast and Furious movies in a row. Therefore, I was not at all surprised by my dream was about chases and crashes. I don’t think, in this case, that I need to think much more about what deeper message about life this dream was giving me.

I think that as long as any of us members of the human race are alive, some of us will be wondering whether there is a purpose to life. Some of us will work hard to understand as much as we can about the meaning of life and the things around us. We might even spend our whole lives thinking about and philosophising. Doing this though might lead to our thinking about life and living, instead of living our lives.

I suspect that there are times when all of us wonder whether life is too complicated for us ever to understand what it’s all about. I know there are times when I shake my head and wonder whether it will ever make sense to me. However, normally after thinking this, I usually continue doing whatever I was doing before I let the mystery of living intrude on the life I was actually living.

Maybe we might consider that we are actually doing what we are supposed to be doing. Whatever it is, perhaps if we paid attention, we might learn something.

In fact, I personally think learning is actually what life is supposed to be about.

I know that, it hardly matters what plans I make, there will always be unexpected things that happen. In fact, I tend to appreciate that sometimes the unexpected surprises are what actually makes life more interesting. I say this even though I don’t think I was born thinking that every lemon in life was ready to be made into lemonade. Neither did I think a spoonful of sugar would make everything taste better.

I have noticed that life will go on, with or without my participation.  However, I personally feel that my own life is more interesting when I am present and paying attention to the people and places around me.

Even as a casual observer, there is probably more than enough to interest and challenge us each and every day. It isn’t actually all that difficult to start noticing and appreciate what the people around us are saying and doing nor about the vast variety of things happening all around us every day.

I am beginning to wonder whether being bored and being boring may be something we bring upon ourselves.

Consider how we look at places we have traveled and paid to see. As Tourists we are often very determined to see anything and everything. In fact, many of us return from vacations needing a vacation.

However, in our own cities, it’s often only when visitors come that we go to local sites and attractions and tell our visitors about them. It is at such times that we may surprise ourselves when we realize that we are proud of these places, and of ourselves, for knowing more than we thought we did about them.

I can’t help but wonder whether a little sightseeing in our own areas might not actually give us a rather nice set of new experiences to add to our enjoyment of life.

At times when we are 'grounded' in our daily lives, a little ‘off season tourism’ might just give us the new experiences our day to day life needs to reinvigorate it and ourselves.