The Meaning of Life

Its wierd to see how many ways there are to make sense of the life we live. (Wait a minute- Is that the meaning of life as I see it?)
(Anyways,) Each one of us attributes some meaning to his or her life and that of others- and spend a lifetime devoted to it.
I would like the enumerate the 10 most prominent beliefs which people have about the 'Meaning of Life' . Read them and think if any of it is true for you:

1.To enjoy or experience life.
Enjoy the ‘moment’ , ‘the journey’.
To laugh often and much’ and ‘to appreciate beauty’
life is a very short trip—while alive, live
You got to get it while you can.
life can be enjoyed even if that is all there is.
If I go to a play I do not enjoy it less because I do not believe that it is divinely created or divinely conducted, that it will last forever instead of stopping at eleven, that many details of it will remain in my memory after a few months, or that it will have any particular moral effect on me. And I enjoy life as I enjoy that play.

2. To love, help, or serve others.
Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.
love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire. The salvation of man is through love and in love.
My consolation and my happiness are to be found in service of all that lives, because the Divine essence is the sum total of all life

3. Life is a mystery.
“I don’t know whether this world has a meaning that transcends it. But I know that I do not know that meaning and that it is impossible for me to know.”
“If we find an answer to that (why we and the universe exist), it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason—for then we would know the mind of God.”

4. Life is meaningless.
Life is that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose
It is meaningless that we are born; it is meaningless that we die.
Life ia like a disease, and the only difference between one man and another is the stage of the disease at which he lives
Comparing life to a ship that is tossed by every wave and by every wind; a ship headed to no port and no harbor, with no rudder, no compass, no pilot, simply floating for a time, then lost in the waves.

5. To serve or worship God and/or prepare for the next (or after-) life.
Life as “only a preparation for the eternal home, which is far more important than the short pleasures that seduce us here”
In life we should “give God glory by reflecting His beauty and His love. That is why we are here and that is the purpose of our lives”
“I just want to do God’s will”

6. Life is a struggle.
life is one damned horrid grind
Life is a tragedy wherein we sit as spectators for awhile and then act our part in it.
Youth is a blunder, manhood a struggle, old age a regret.

7. To contribute to something that is greater than ourselves.
The meaning of life lies in the chance it gives us to produce or contribute to something greater than ourselves.
To leave the world a bit better
You should be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity
The true joy in life is being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one.

8. To become self-actualized.
To develop or ‘evolve’ as a person or as a species.
To pursue truth(s), wisdom, or a higher level of being.
Man’s main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is
To become what we are capable of becoming is the only end of life.

9. To create your own meaning.
Life is what we make it, always has been, always will be
The ‘hard truth’: We live in a vast and awesome universe in which, daily, suns are made and worlds destroyed, where humanity clings to an obscure clod of rock. The significance of our lives and our fragile realm derives from our own wisdom and courage. We are the custodians of life’s meaning.

10. Life is absurd or a joke.
The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.
Life - a tragedy when seen in close-up but a comedy in the long shot.
Our ability to understand life: reading ‘Sanskrit’ to a pony.
There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.

The Outsider - by Albert Camus

I just finished reading the Outsider by Albert Camus. I am not quite sure if I regret having read it or feeling fortunate to have come across it. But all I can say with certainty now is that whoever will read it will feel a profound sense of respect for Albert Camus for having created a character like Meursault and letting us look at the world through his perspective. I think one must read this book and experience this world for himself at his own risk, beacause its quite possible one may never be able to come out of it.

It easily ranks among the greatest novellas ever written!

That is all I would say to review this book!

Hyperrealism

The term hyperreality characterizes the inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from fantasy, especially in technologically advanced postmodern cultures. Hyperreality is a means to characterise the way consciousness defines what is actually "real" in a world where a multitude of media can radically shape and filter the original event or experience being depicted.

Most aspects of hyperreality can be thought of as "reality by proxy." For example, a viewer watching pornography begins to live in the non-existent world of the pornography, and even though pornography is not an accurate depiction of sex, for the viewer, the reality of "sex" becomes something non-existent.

Some examples are simpler: the McDonald's "M" arches create a world with the promise of endless amounts of identical food, when in "reality" the "M" represents nothing, and the food produced is neither identical nor infinite.

Baudrillard suggested that he world we live in has been replaced by a copy world, where we seek simulated stimuli and nothing more. The example can be given of a society whose cartographers create a map so detailed that it covers the very things it was designed to represent. When the empire declines, the map fades into the landscape and there is neither the representation nor the real remaining – just the hyperreal.

Hyperreality is significant as a paradigm to explain current cultural conditions. Consumerism, because of its reliance on sign exchange value (e.g. brand X shows that one is fashionable, car Y indicates one's wealth), could be seen as a contributing factor in the creation of hyperreality or the hyperreal condition. Hyperreality tricks consciousness into detaching from any real emotional engagement, instead opting for artificial simulation, and endless reproductions of fundamentally empty appearance. Essentially, fulfillment or happiness is found through simulation and imitation of a transient simulacrum of reality, rather than any interaction with any "real" reality.

If you're interested in knowing more...then google up and explore!!!

I SHALL NOT CARE

When I am dead and over me bright April
Shakes out her rain-drenched hair,
Tho' you should lean above me broken-hearted,
I shall not care.

I shall have peace, as leafy trees are peaceful
When rain bends down the bough,
And I shall be more silent and cold-hearted
Than you are now.

-Sara Teasdale

(This beautiful piece,she wrote just before she committed
suicide by an taking an overdose of sleeping pills)

What A Wonderful Life

Only rarely do you come across stories so incredible to be true and yet you would want to believe them. 'Its a Wonderful Life' is one such story. A film you watch and at the end of it you feel this immense sense of gratitude towards all the wonderful people and things that happenned to you and you thank God for all the simple good things of life.A story which each one of us would yearn to live after having watched it!A big thanks to all who have played their part in making this movie experience possible...From Conception to free delivery through a free download on the Internet and those wonderful unlikely circumstances and coincidences that lead me to download it and watch it.

Watch it and you'll thank me!

LONGING

I am not sorry for my soul
That it must go unsatisfied,
For it can live a thousand times,
Eternity is deep and wide.

I am not sorry for my soul,
But oh, my body that must go
Back to a little drift of dust
Without the joy it longed to know.

-Sara Teasdale

(I simply love her)

On Art.....

Any great work of art... revives and readapts time and space, and the measure of its success is the extent to which it makes you an inhabitant of that world - the extent to which it invites you in and lets you breathe its strange, special air. - Leonard Bernstein

Giving up Smoking...

Friend (Who wont change for anything):I just want to run away from here,as far as I can as fast as I canSo many expectations from work and I am in capable of doing anythingBesides, have smoked only one cigarette.Maazha doka phiraaylay

Me: (Who fails to pursue every time) Smoking is all there is to ur character/identity now....There is nothing else to talk to you about,which both of us can understand and identify with.We hardly talk about anything else.Besides ur s/w stuff and cricket, i dont really know what u understand,You do not exist otherwise.

If we take responsibility for our emotional response to all events in our life, there is nobody else to blame if we are not happy! The choice is ours alone.

Religion....


"You see, I’m an atheist. And I have only one religion; the sublime in human nature. There is nothing to approach the sanctity of the highest man possible, and there is nothing that gives me the same reverent feeling, the feeling when one’s spirit wants to kneel bareheaded… do not call it hero-worship, because it is more than that. It is a kind of strange and improbable white heat, where admiration becomes religion and religion becomes philosophy and philosophy, the whole of one’s life." - Ayn Rand