The Meaning of Life

What is it that you want to achieve in your life?

This is probably one of the most important questions you can ever ask yourself.  It goes to the very root of another question so many of us ask, perhaps without expecting an answer - what is the meaning of life?

With such an important question you should not simply accept the first answer that comes to mind.  Not even if you believe you already know what you want to achieve.  Spend some time thinking deeply about this achievement.  How will you feel as you begin to achieve it?  What will change in your life and in the lives of those around you as this begins to happen?

Make sure as you do this that everything feels really positive.  If it doesn't, then there is something wrong.  You may think that this is what you want to achieve, but the reality is that there is something quite different that you really want, which is expressing itself in a different way for some reason - as it arises from the depths of your mind and spirit it appears to change, until when it comes to the surface it looks completely different.  So if you do not feel really positive about this achievement you must dig much deeper to find out what your true desire is.

What you should find, once you have properly identified what it is you want to achieve in life, is that it is something that can grow and develop.  It is something that you can begin to achieve, if only in a very small way, very soon after you have identified what it is and have started working towards it.  That is why I have tried to avoid using the word "goal", which you maybe expected to see earlier in this article.  It is more a way of life, of moving along a particular path, than something that you get and then find there is nothing left to do.  It really does become "the meaning of life" for you.

If you have identified this path, this growth, this ongoing achievement correctly you should also be able to identify some "milestones" along the way.  Milestones that show you have made progress but are not at the finishing line.  By definition, none of those milestones can be the finishing line, none of them can say "zero miles to go", as what you are aiming for is a continuous growth, not something at which you can finally arrive.

You should try to identify both distant and very close milestones.  This is important.  Have a distant target in mind, and try to make sure that what you are working on now brings you closer to that distant target rather than further away.  But also have some close targets so you can feel fulfilled in the "now" rather than only in the distant future.

So, what IS the meaning of life?  This is a question that has perturbed many very intelligent men and women over many centuries.  When you have completed the exercise I have suggested in this short article, the answers arrived at by eminent philosophers will probably now seem mundane and unimportant to you.  You KNOW the one answer unique to you.  You know the meaning of your life and know that now your life can be fuller and better every day that passes.