Dec 30 2005
The meaning of life, and why we are here
Before I begin, these are my opinions, I’m not preaching here, just talking. Please if you don’t agree with me, post a comment about it. And finally, don’t take anything personally, it is not my intention to attack anyone in this post, but like I said I’m here to talk about what I think might be true.
So, here is one of my few deep and intellectual posts…What is the meaning of life, and why do we exist? Well, according to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe the answer is 42. But since that doesn’t tell us much, we need to look a bit farther.
In everyone’s life they are faced with hundreds of decisions each day. For example, what shirt should I wear today? Do I brush the hair on the left side of my head first or the right side. Now, most of these decisions are meaningless, it doesn’t matter which outcome happens, in the end it won’t make a difference. If you accept the fact that for each decision that you made, there is another copy of you, in some other universe that made the other decision, then you can see what I mean here. With the “meaningless” decisions, the universe splits when you decide something, but the two universes flow right back together, because the difference between the two universes is negligible.
Then there are decisions that have an impact on our lives. With these decisions that two universes that are created are unique and different, and don’t flow back together. As a result there are potentially limitless universes out there, each slightly different based on difference decisions/choices made through everyone’s lives. These decisions in our lives are focal points. They define who and what we are, our personalities and have an impact for the foreseeable future on our lives.
So you have a decision, a focal point in your life, and based on past experiences you make you decision. The effect of this decision is not limited to you only. Most focal points, usually involve other people as well. The focal point is based on your interaction with other people. As a result, you might be a part of a focal point that you really don’t have much control over. It could be someone else’s decision that has an impact on you. If the other choice was taken, then your choices are different. This links back to what I said before; how a single decision can have a cascade effect on a whole group of people. This is what I meant when I said that.
So, how does this fit in with why we are all here? Very simply, focal points are the reason of our existence. We exist to make choices. While some choices are meaningless, the focal points, the choices that affect us and others are the reason for our existence. To put into other word, free will is the reason why we exist. At some point, some parts of us, perhaps our consciousness/spirit, choose to exist and make more decisions. That’s why we are here. Something to back this up; this time I’ll use a movie, Matrix Reloaded. “I believe this night holds for each and every one of us, the very meaning of our lives.” In this case, for some people the purpose of their entire existence was to make a decision during a certain focal point. This leads to my last point, the meaning of life; which is to make these decisions.
Some interesting things come into play when we consider a higher power and what affect they have on our decisions. If you accept that there is a higher power, then it is also highly probably that there is a grand scheme to all the decisions that we are making. If you were in control of everything, would you just sit back and let any random thing happen, or would you set into motion a long term plan of some sort? Logically, it makes sense. So, if there is a plan to everything, what choice do we have?
The plan lays out the end result for people, it doesn’t fix all the individual choices that we have. While the end might be fixed, the path leading to it is undetermined. I have a solid example for this. My father when he was in college, majored in zoology, and he was extremely interested in genetics and molecular sciences. At this point, his dream was to come to America and work at the Cold Spring Harbor DNA Lab. As it happens, he got a job at a bank, before he could get into a graduate school for science. This led him to getting an MBA, working at one of the largest industrial companies in India, and then coming to America to get a PHD. After completing his work for his PHD, instead of going back to India, my father took a position at Hofstra University. As my brother and I were growing up, we had a school field trip to a DNA lab to get some “hands-on” experience with what we were learning. The name of this lab? Yup, the Cold Spring Harbor DNA Lab. My father ended up living 30 minutes away from the lab. If my father had gotten into a graduate program, he would have ended up on Long Island working at the lab. Either way, the end result of were we would be was fixed, the path leading to it wasn’t.