What is the meaning of life? In other words, is there a reason behind why conscious, sentient beings exist? And if there is a meaning, what is it? When we use the term ‘meaning’, we usually mean to ask whether there is an objective purpose for life and existence, or whether there isn’t one and we all have to adopt our own subjective meanings. So, is there a goal of existence?
For people of certain religious groups, the purpose of life is to live by the values that their religion and their God has set out for them. This could be for the sake of carrying out God’s work itself and/ or to attain God’s blessing, such as a place in Heaven. For some, the purpose may be to serve others, to serve their family, their loved ones, or their tribe, be it a community or nation. For another it may be to live up to ideals like morality and excellence, such as in their profession. For other people it may be to have a family, and to raise a human being. Life can also be about earning enough money to then live comfortably and pursue one’s hobbies, travel and enjoy life through this comfort and freedom.
To spiritual groups, the highest aim in life may be to raise the consciousness of people around them. The purpose of existence is also seen as the progressive betterment of the soul; with each incarnation the soul collects more lessons and experiences it is meant to have. Buddhists believe that with each lifetime our souls can move closer to the goal of liberating ourselves from worldly desires and suffering created by the mind. This leads to the ultimate end of breaking the cycle of life and death to attain Nirvana, or liberation. An atheist, on the other hand, might argue that there is no inherent purpose to life. There was a certain statistical chance that sentient life would come to be in a universe this large. It did, and here we are, but there is no meaning beyond that. Therefore, we must all adopt our own subjective purposes and create our own meanings now that we exist. They may alternatively suggest that it is our purpose to propagate and continue our species since it is in our evolutionary drive to do so, or even just because we are a beautiful chance miracle of existence.
From getting rich and travelling to liberating ourselves from life and death, it seems that every group is moving towards their conception of what the highest fulfilment will be, be it spiritual, earthly, or divine. So, is the purpose of existence moving towards fulfilment? Is that why we exist? And if it is fulfilment, is one group’s understanding of fulfilment righter than another’s? If so, how do we discern who is right about what the highest purpose and fulfilment is? Or is this question irrelevant because fulfilment is inherently subjective, and the atheist was right all along; and we are all just trying to find our own version of purpose through our own version of fulfilment?
So, let’s get a little deeper. To figure out why conscious beings exist, let’s answer the question that comes before it; why does anything exist at all? The original mystery of the universe is how things first came into existence. The second is how some of those things became conscious, sentient things which were able to perceive the other things and ask questions like, ‘what is the meaning of it all?’ It was the universe’s existence that permitted our existence in the first place. It follows that the meaning of existence itself must be tied to the meaning of our existence as well. So, why does anything exist?
A physicist could argue that we came into existence because of the ‘matter-antimatter’ asymmetry. Matter and antimatter perfectly annihilate each other when they meet, and models of the Big Bang Theory predict that there should have been equal amounts of matter and antimatter produced during the Big Bang. There was an imbalance, however; there was more matter. That extra, leftover matter came to form the universe today. Scientists are unable to explain why there was more matter produced, however, let alone being able to address why the Big Bang even happened. To the religious person, this was simply God’s will, to create the universe with this additional matter. But how did God come into being in the first place to make this decision?
This is something I always pondered; how come ‘everything’, as we know it, came into existence? Did it just come from nothing? Was there a ‘nothing’ before everything? And if so, why didn’t nothing continue to stay as nothing? If it was indeed ‘nothing’ before everything, then why did ‘nothing’ just Big Bang into everything? Religious people could answer that God created the Big Bang. Well did God have a bigger Big Bang for God to come into existence? What was before that Big Bang? Who created God? Why did God exist and not nothing?
In trying to wrap my head around this question, I interestingly found solace in the concept of unanswerable paradoxes and limitations of the human mind. There are paradoxes that we simply cannot answer. Take the concept of infinity. Infinity leaves us with plenty of mathematical paradoxes, i.e. two contradictory facts simultaneously being true. Let’s take an example. Infinity + 1 = Infinity (if you add anything to infinity you will get infinity back because it is infinite). Now, if you subtract infinity from both sides of that equation; Infinity (– Infinity) + 1 = Infinity (– Infinity), that leaves you with 1 = 0, which cannot be true. Another example of infinity is a circle. While a square has merely four corners, a circle has an infinite number of corners. But, at the same time, it has no corners at all. This brough me comfort because I realized that if paradoxes exist in reality that cannot be reconciled by the human mind, perhaps the mystery of how ‘everything’ came from ‘nothing ‘simply transcends human understanding, reason, and logic as well.
To me, it seems that there were two options, two forces, or two opposing concepts: existence and nonexistence. When we ask the question, why does anything exist; we are at the same time asking the inverse of that question: why does nothing not exist?
We know that existence came into being. Maybe it was for a reason that we could understand. Maybe it transcends reason as we understand it. Maybe it was inevitable, and there was no other way that it could be. Maybe when existence came into being, it triumphed over and annihilated ‘nonexistence’. Maybe existence simultaneously coexists with ‘nonexistence’; perhaps they are concepts or forces that cannot exist without each other, like Yin-Yang.
To me it seems that, whatever the case may be, the greatest, largest question is the question of existence itself. There is nothing larger than existence itself. Existence is the precursor to concepts and ideas themselves. How can a concept (like a God’s will) cause existence, when we cannot answer what caused its (in this case, God’s) existence in the first place? It needs to have existed or come into existence before creating the concept of anything existing. But how could it have? Clearly, the force, idea, or concept of existence — if it can even fit into one of these categories — had to come first, before anything could have existed. There is no concept, reason or force that precedes the question of existence — the greatest mystery, the fundamental question before any other question.
Thus, existence is not a means to a larger end; it is not obeying a Law of Physics or the rule of God. It just is. Since nothing supersedes it, and nothing greater than itself has caused it to come into being, existence must be for itself. In this case, there is no inherent point of existence, other than to exist.
What do I mean by that? Well, we cannot define the reason for existence by the obstacles that we face in our existence, and the fulfilment that overcoming those obstacles brings us. Let’s take an example. You could argue that life is God’s test for us to either live a saintly life and gain eternity in heaven or fail to do so and be sent to Purgatory or Hell. Say this is actually God’s plan. What is the larger point for why God is sending people to Heaven and Hell and Purgatory? Is God just figuring things out by themselves and that seems like her/his best idea of how to spend their time? Or did God come into existence imbued with this idea in their mind in the first place? If so, who gave God this idea, where did it come from? Who/ what created God in the first place? If we keep asking why, we hit a point where there is no answer. The question becomes about how anything ever came into existence in the first place, which is before any other question.
The largest end (or meaning) in life that you can think of — gaining an esteemed seat in the afterlife by embodying religious principles, liberation from the cycle of life and death through a Buddhist way of living — may even be the most deeply fulfilling thing in the universe. Overcoming such obstacles may indeed bear the greatest fruit if the Muslim or Christian God is real and deemed it to be the most important challenge. And if something is the most deeply fulfilling thing in the universe, by all means we should do it. But, even if that is the case, that cannot be the reason why everything came into existence in the first place. If that were the case, that would mean that ‘everything’ came into existence (rather than ‘nothing’) in order for this obstacle to be overcome and for that framework to be utilised. All of existence came to be because heaven, hell and purgatory needed to be filled with souls. But how could that be? That system (such as the judgement system of Heaven or the cycle of birth and death) could not have come before or created existence itself. The obstacle is secondary to ‘existence’.
Say that you accept my conclusion: existence transcends understanding and it had to have preceded any concept that we regularly attribute to bringing about existence. What does this mean for your belief system? Does this negate the idea and rules of a Hindu, Muslim, or a Christian God? While I am sure that each religion says something specific and different about the origin of everything, other than that potentially significant conflict, this does not necessarily upend any belief system to my knowledge (although I feel that if I look more deeply into it, it might). On the other hand, this viewpoint may even overlap with any and all of the religions’ views as well. Ultimately different people within the same belief system may have different understandings of that system. The point is that this argument does not necessarily or inherently contradict any of those belief systems, based on my knowledge of them. The Jewish person, the Buddhist, and the Atheist could all still be right
So, what does it change? The initial question we asked was, ‘what is the meaning life’ or ‘why do conscious, sentient beings exist?’ ’ I reasoned that to answer the question of why we exist we must answer the question that comes before it; why does anything exist? Well, we have found that existence is for the sake of itself; it is not in service of any greater end that is beyond it. And if existence is not a means to a larger goal, such as a framework that could not have preceded it, life must be an end in itself too. Life is for itself; life is for the sake of life.
So, while a religious or spiritual person may see life primarily as a means to a larger goal; I would contend that each and every aspect of existence — from life to heaven — is an end in itself, because it all exists under the purview of existence, which is the greatest, highest end. Let’s take an example. If you are a Buddhist, your perspective may be that the goal of this life is to finally attain enlightenment by transcending suffering. I am not contending with anyone’s conception of what the highest fulfilment may be. My argument is that liberating itself could not have been the reason for your soul’s existence in the first place. There was nothing to liberate yourself from if you did not have life after life to lead. The light at the end of the tunnel is a meaningless concept without the tunnel. The ultimate reason for your existence was existence — your entire existence. Every single life, from each and every single one of its moments to the eventual nirvana at the end, was for the sake of itself (as I am writing this I realise that this perspective may overlap with nuanced Buddhist views).
So, life is an end in itself. And the smallest part of the whole likely bears the qualities of the larger whole, i.e., if life is for the sake of itself, each of its parts must be for the sake of itself too. And so, each year of life must also be an end in itself. Each day must be an end in itself. Each moment must be an end in itself. If all of existence is an end, then it’s tiniest, smallest part, a moment in time, must be an end too. And, so, we have arrived at where we actually live: now.
Having this realisation was quite a beautiful feeling. I felt like I solved an incredible maths equation, which held up both in theory and in practice. Why? Because our life is lived as a moment-to-moment experience, in practice.
It is only the present moment that we inhabit. We cannot ever go back to the past or jump ahead to the future. Our experience of reality is lived in the present. It is easy to forget this because the actions and thoughts of the past have an impact on the present, even though we are no longer living in it. Our perception of the future can shape how we behave today and how the future may actually turn out to be, even if it is only the present that we are in. And these things have an essential place in life, of course. We must work towards long-term goals. It is important to understand our past so that we can understand ourselves and lead our lives intentionally. It can become a habit, however, to romanticise the seemingly perfect past and the promising future. We can forget to realise that we are not really enjoying the moment that we’re in.
In the 10th grade a friend of mine told me about how desperately he wanted summer vacation to start. Normal 10th grader line, I thought. He continued, revealing that one week into summer break he would get absolutely bored and miss school, however. This really stuck with me. Firstly, that is quite self-aware. And, secondly, what a miserable way to exist. We can all be prey to this. If this is our way of being, are we ever really happy?
We can forget to see the present as anything beyond the means to achieve some future goal. We defer our happiness to the future, for after we complete this assignment, or get into our dream college, or earn this amount of money or land this job. In my experience, when I have achieved something, it will eventually sink into normalcy. This is not to say that no goal can profoundly change the course of our life or that we should not have any. It is to say that predicating our happiness on the achievement of these goals is tying our contentment to these external events which will, most likely, not sustain our long-term happiness. There will always be new goals. What I desperately wanted I can end up achieving and taking for granted. I can try to be grateful for all of the luck, blessings, and achievements of my life, but I will have to consciously remind myself of it. And things that I once took for granted may no longer be around anymore; friends move away, relationships change, experiences come to an end — it is the unstoppable passage of time. And so, each phase of life is beautiful in a different way; there are new challenges, new goals, new feelings, and new experiences that we can never relive in exactly the same way. As Heraclitus so poignantly put it, ‘No man ever steps in the same river twice.’
We think of life as a journey. But it is not. As Alan Watts put it, we should think of life as music instead. The aim of travel is to get somewhere. The journey may be enjoyable but the purpose of the journey, the reason we ever went on a journey, was to reach a certain destination. The most important part is the end. In music, however, the end of the song is not the point of the song, nor is it the most important part of the song. If that were so, the best musicians would be the ones who most quickly reached the end. Take dancing too. The whole point of dancing is the dance itself. We dance for the sake of itself. We sing for the sake of the sake of singing. In the same way, each and every moment in this existence is for the sake of itself.
If we begin to think that life will fundamentally change in the future after we achieve some milestone, we should ask ourselves, will it? When I achieve these current goals, will I not have new goals? Take exercise. When we workout we can become excited, and even somewhat impatient, to become stronger and fitter than we currently are. It’s normal to imagine a future where exercises we are currently doing will be so much easier and effortless for us. When I go for a swim and I become out of breath, instead of feeling that slight frustration at it not being easier for me or imagining a future where I have greatly improved stamina, I try to remind myself that, no matter how good I get at swimming, I will always push myself to the point where I become out of breath. No matter what I achieve in life, I will have to find a new way to challenge myself with a new mountain to climb, a new hurdle to overcome. And the day that I achieve everything that I have currently ever dreamed of achieving, I will probably go for a swim, and swim till I am out of breath.
Right now, I’m writing this piece. I love it. I have gone in and out of flow state writing it. But a few hours into writing I did the thing! I slipped into the excitement of thinking about sharing it with close ones and their potential reactions to reading it. I briefly thought about posting it on Medium or creating a Substack account, as well as the validation I may receive if I publish the link on Linkedin. It is good to be excited; it is deeply human to want to share the work that we are proud of and beautiful revelations we have had with other people, particularly those that we love.
But first I must complete it. If I love writing, shouldn’t I love the process of writing? And if I do, then I should be here. If I want to complete it, I need to be here. I must sit with myself. I must lose the motivation. Get bored. Get reinspired. Move back into the rhythm of it. Repeat.
Sharing is rewarding; if this resonates with others it will be beautiful. But each part of the process is beautiful too, from the moment I had the initial idea, to the excitement of writing down my first thoughts; the moments of dullness, to the states of deep flow.
I did not end up completing it the first day that I started writing it. I paid the bill at the café, got an auto and went home. Then I ate lunch, felt a little lazy, thought about other things, regained some desire to write again, eventually exercised and went about the rest of my day. In a few days I completed this piece of writing that I was proud of. I felt the feeling that I have something to say — that I have had novel realisations and been able to articulate it, even if no one else in the world were to understand it at all. For that little bit of time, it was just for me. An inside secret. And then I shared it with close people. Soon I will share it online. Day by day I will try to move towards what brings me closest to the flow state and what brings me the deepest satisfaction in this moment-to-moment song that is life. This is it. Each moment is it. It is all it.
And so, we get back to the beginning. For some it is a family life, for some it is work, for some it is their spiritual life. We all have different things that bring us meaning and fulfilment, and we may all be working towards larger goals. But we must remember that each moment of this experience is an end in itself. We are always in the state of becoming. As Nich That Nanh so perfectly put it, ‘We have already arrived.’
‘The more you seek rest as the consequence of doing rather than in the process of doing, the more restless you will become. Peace isn’t waiting for you over the next hill. Nor is it something you construct like a building. It must be part of the creative process itself.’, said J. Donald Walters. If life is an end in itself, and a moment is an end in itself, this is the best way to live, isn’t it? In our experience of life itself, when you start craving the fruits of our labour rather than focusing on the experience of the activity itself, it can take away from it.
And so, my focus has become doing justice to each moment as best as I can. I try to be more present in my experience of life, which is ever changing. This means that I can have the fullest experience, with no stone left unturned. With more energy and clarity of mind I can make best use of my most valuable asset, which is time, to do whatever it is that I truly want to do, rather than what I just do out of habit. That is why I place importance on meditating and having a healthy relationship with my phone rather than compulsively overusing it (which is also why I created ‘BreakFree: From Your Phone’).
Whatever you are working towards, you cannot deny that you will never regain this time of your life back. No matter how much money you earn, you will never be able to rewind the clock. And whatever your belief system may be about life and death, rebirth, and heaven; you cannot deny that in our experience of reality, all that we know is this life.
So, we should treat it as an end, not just as a means to a larger end. In my eyes, no system can precede existence, and all we have experienced is this existence. So, yes, we can and should work towards larger goals, be it for the afterlife or for later on in life. But life, death, rebirth, and heaven all fall under the purview of existence — none precede the question of existence itself.
And just as existence simply is, we simply are. We must not forget that existence is for the sake of itself; and it is for all of itself — every single moment of it.
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