A Quote by A.C. Grayling
And I say, the meaning of life is what you make it. There will be as many different meaningful lives as there are people to live them.
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I suppose for a very long time I've been trying to understand how it is that people might make sense out of their lives and make meaning and make their lives meaningful in the face of the trouble that life brings.
There are those individuals who die for a cause, and we say they have made the ultimate sacrifice. We call them martyrs, and we never doubt their sincerity. Yet many others search their entire lives for something—or someone—worth dying for and this is very different. These are the lonely and the desperate, fearful that their lives have no meaning. They yearn for the bullet, if only someone else will pull the trigger.
I think we as people struggle for what is meaningful in our lives, and I think that modern, contemporary life is as easy as it's ever been, for many, many people, and the amount of physical exertion, for most people, is less than it's ever been. I think that there is something about the ritual of making things more difficult that people find meaning in.
We will be able to depart this life with the quiet peace-giving notion, that we were permitted to contribute to the happiness of many who will live after us. In our long lives we endeavored to unfold the collective consciousness. In our lives we have known hell and heaven; the final balance, however, is that we helped pave the way to dynamic harmony in this earthly house. That, I believe, is the meaning of this live.
All I wanted was to say honestly to people: 'Have a look at yourselves and see how bad and dreary your lives are!' The important thing is that people should realize that, for when they do, they will most certainly create another and better life for themselves. I will not live to see it, but I know that it will be quite different, quite unlike our present life. And so long as this different life does not exist, I shall go on saying to people again and again: 'Please, understand that your life is bad and dreary!'
For many years now I have listened to the stories of people with cancer and other life-threatening illnesses as their counselor. From them I have learned how to enjoy the minute particulars of life once again, the grace of a hot cup of coffee, the presence of a friend, the blessing of having a new cake of soap or an hour without pain. Such humble experience is the stuff that many of the very best stories are made of. If we think we have no stories it is because we have not paid enough attention to our lives. Most of us live lives that are far richer and more meaningful than we appreciate.
As for the various religions, there's no doubt that they are very meaningful to adherents, and allow them to delude themselves into thinking there is some meaning to their lives beyond what we agree is the case. I'd never try to talk them out of the delusions, which are necessary for them to live a life that makes some sense to them. These beliefs can provide a framework for deeds that are noble or savage, and anywhere in between, and there's every reason to focus attention on the deeds and the background for them, to the extent that we can grasp it.
In a real sense, people who have read good literature have lived more than people who cannot or will not read. It is not true that we have only one life to live; if we can read, we can live as many more lives and as many kinds of lives as we wish.
We read novels because we need stories; we crave them; we can’t live without telling them and hearing them. Stories are how we make sense of our lives and of the world. When we’re distressed and go to therapy, our therapist’s job is to help us tell our story. Life doesn’t come with plots; it’s messy and chaotic; life is one damn, inexplicable thing after another. And we can’t have that. We insist on meaning. And so we tell stories so that our lives make sense.
The things we make have one supreme quality - they live longer than us. We perish, they survive; we have one life, they have many lives, and in each life they can mean different things. Which means that, while we all have one biography, they have many.
The truth is, if what we choose to do with our lives won't make a story meaningful, it won't make a life meaningful either.
Life has no meaning unless one lives it with a will, at least to the limit of one's will. Virtue, good, evil are nothing but words, unless one takes them apart in order to build something with them; they do not win their true meaning until one knows how to apply them.
First and foremost, you do not have to live up to or emulate the lives of any of your predecessors. But at the very least, you should know about them. You will have your own life, interests, and ideas of what you want or do not want in life. Do what you enjoy doing. Be honest with yourself and others. Don't think of satisfying anyone: your elders, peers, government, religion, or children who will come after you. Develop meaningful ideals, and become conscious of others, their existence, and their lives.
Some of them [family names] have sentimental value for some reason or another, some of them just sound beautiful. Some of them are because of people that are meaningful to us in our lives. So it's hard to say which one we'll pick. Sometimes they say you have to see the child before you decide. So maybe when we see her we'll make a last-second decision.
The meaningful times, the meaningful people, even the people who were not so meaningful, but these people who have done things in your life that make you what you are, they're bricks in the building that you are.
My greatest influences are actually probably a set of different teachers. And these teachers, most prominently at my high school, but also a few others, helped kind of instill in me, thinking thoughts about how life is meaningful in terms of how we all kind of live in a network of people and how you interact with those people is part of what makes life essentially meaningful and then kind of concepts to think about, how do you add value to other people's lives? How do they add value to yours? And how do you kind of form a community together in the network?
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