What Is The Meaning Of Life?

What is the meaning of life?

People often come up with what they think is the definitive answer.  Yet it always falls short of being applicable to anyone outside of their purview.  It falls short of being applicable to the infant who dies soon after birth. Or the refugee child who loses his legs in a war zone. Or the prisoner of war who dies in a gas chamber along with the rest of his family.  A better question would be, "what is the meaning of your own life?"  It will still depend on a lot of things; such as our desires, aspirations, needs, and experiences. Basically, it’s what motivates us at this particular moment in our lives. 

Experience is key though.  No one is born pre-programmed with the answer.  So experience is what we accumulate as we develop and define our own answer.  Then again, many people search and never find it.  Many others won't even bother.  And of course, many more will live and die and never get the opportunity.  Religious people think they’ve already figured it out.  They believe that everything we ever need to know about life--past, present, and future--is in their religious text.  The problem with them is that they think their scriptures are infallible. The same scripture that has gone through numerous mistranslations and misinterpretations and continues to include inconsistencies and an indifference to reality and humanity.

The important thing to remember is that the meaning of life is specific to the individual.  Even if a person was influenced or indoctrinated with someone else's meaning, that person will re-define and customize that meaning for his or herself. Yet, despite each of us having a unique outlook on life, the best chance for more of us to have a better well-being is to have at least a common baseline. Something that we can all agree on. The very basic baseline of Hominism involves science and compassion. It's the understanding that science is the method that we use to figure out how everything works. And compassion is what motivates us to use science for the benefit of humanity.