It's an age-old question, a perenial one that no one has ever had an answer for. Philosophers from time immemorial - Plato, Socrates, Lao Tzu, Confucius, Augustine, Kahlil Gibran, Keirkegaard, Betrand Russell and so many others - have sought an answer but found none:
What is life? What is the meaning of life?
How do we, as Postmodern thinkers readily reveal, find a universal answer, a meta-narrative, to such personal and intimate question? Is there even an answer?
When we look back at our own lives, observing the throngs of people moving to and fro going about their daily business, we ask, what is my life about? What is the meaning to my own life?
Some find it in their work, some with their families, others in love, and others in exploration and conquest. But there is no singular answer. Life perhaps is precisely that - anything, and everything. We critique workaholics for lacking a 'life', social or otherwise; we penalise family-oriented workers who choose not to be as dedicated and committed to their work. Are we not a contradictory specie? Perhaps that contradication holds a lesson - there is no grand meta-narrative to life. It merely 'is'. It is what we choose to define it as ...
And that perhaps is a morbid thought for we fear the reality that life is merely transitory; we are merely 'passing through. Life lacks permanence: we live and we will eventually die. It is quite simple yet the equation stirs such complex emotions. We fear that all we've done in this life time will disintegrate and be forgotten with time. We fear that we will and perhaps have not done enough. We want to be remembered. We seek immortality ...
It so readily explains why people seek fame and fortune; why they sought achievement and success. Beyond the material gains, it is the need to be immortal; to be remembered for the success one has carved upon this world.
And we all do it ... in our own way.
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