The Meaning of Life

I took two science courses in high school: physics and chemistry. I liked physics the most of the two. I was pretty good at math, of which there’s a fair amount in physics, but I primarily enjoyed its philosophical bent, that it was seeking to describe the whole architecture of the physical universe. Something in me was already trying to understand life’s fundamental meaning, the engine driving it all, though I didn’t know that’s what I was wanting to learn, so mostly I was just depressed a lot. As for chemistry, I understood that it was attempting to describe the bubbling, microscopic underpinnings of the natural world, but it lacked physics’ operatic grandeur, so it didn’t quite capture my imagination.

I knew, however, I was not about to pursue a career in the sciences. Physics was cool, but I didn’t think the questions I was quietly asking myself could be answered with a mathematical formula. For that, I turned to the arts, and eventually interviewing writers. Normally, I interview fiction writers and memoirists, but occasionally I interview historians or academics. I even enjoyed talking to the economist Richard Thaler, though I had zero personal curiosity about economics.

It didn’t matter that I wasn’t interested in economics because Thaler certainly was, and I find people’s interests interesting. Thaler, by the way, is famous in economists’ circles for pointing out that people don’t always behave rationally when they spend money. This, apparently, was news to many economists who based their theories on a view of humans as logical survival machines. Human beings certainly want to survive, but I think if those other economists had been honest with themselves–by which I mean think about their own lives–they would have admitted that their daily existence is driven by something other than not-dying.

This, to me, is the inherent limits of science. To be clear, I have much enjoyed the benefits and luxuries of science, from the Internet, to air conditioning, to vaccines for deadly viruses. I also think that if a person is interested in physics, or chemistry, or microbiology the best thing that person can do for themselves and for the rest of humanity is to pursue that interest with as much passion as their curiosity allows.

But if it’s people you want to understand–or life itself, for that matter–I don’t think you will find many satisfying answers looking through a telescope or microscope, or by studying the migration of birds, or counting the rings on fallen trees. If you want to understand people and life you need look no further than yourself. You are a person, and you are life, just as much a part of the natural world as whales and daffodils and meteors. And the most important question you will ever ask is, “What do I love to do simply because I love doing it?” Within that question is the driving force of your life and all living things.

You’re not a survival machine, and you know it. And if you aren’t, then no one is; and if no one is, then nothing is. Life is life is life. Nothing will get you out of bed like doing what you love, and nothing makes you forget time like doing what you love, and nothing leaves you eager for more living than doing what you love. I’m a philosophical type, and so I’m personally interested in the power of curiosity and love and how this connects us all. That’s me. When I start thinking about curiosity and connection, I lose track of time and find myself bouncing around my house wanting to write a book or teach a workshop.

The only reason I spend my days this way is that I recognized–admitted and accepted, really–that there is absolutely nothing more important than to find and do what I love to do. The worst thing a person can believe is that mere survival, that dull pragmatism, that just getting by, is the guiding light toward which we should all unhappily but ineluctably march. The worst thing you can think is that for some reason your joy and enthusiasm aren’t that important, that being interested isn’t important, being happy isn’t important. You might as well believe life isn’t important.

That’s a belief that will kill you, or at least drain all the life out of living. You don’t have to know why being happy and interested matters more than anything else. You can leave that to people like me. Unless you want know why, then start thinking about it! Or count rings on trees, or listen to whales, or write hip-hop. It doesn’t matter what you love to do, as long as you love doing it. Do it, and you are smack in the middle of the meaning of life, though you may not realize because you will be too busy enjoying yourself.

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This post is republished on Medium.

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