What Does It All Mean?

Youth is something which is wasted on the young. The older I get, the more I find myself thinking "if only I knew then what I know now". But, this is the nature of life. Just as one starts to experience time more quickly, the older one gets, so it seems that we start to see ourselves very differently as time goes on. Meaning, it turns out, is just as relative as time itself. And it seems that our search for it is never-ending.

So, what exactly is the meaning of life? People have been pontificating this question for as long as there have been people. Most of the better-known philosophers have posited this question, and have answered it within their own realms of experience as best they could. I believe that this is one of those questions which may never be fully answered, or understood, least of all by me. I can, however, attempt to give you, the reader, a Will's eye view into how I make sense of things.

There was a time when I believed, like many others, that for my life to have any meaning, I would get an education, a career, a wife, children, and perhaps a dog or two. Many people follow this path, and for them, like myself, it was a vehicle to obtain purpose, immortality, and, if they were lucky, a portion of happiness. Why else would we be placed on this planet? Life had other lessons for me, however.

The aforementioned assumptions were predicated on the belief that I would go through life as I had planned it in my youth. After my SCI, I went through what I can only describe as a mourning period for the life I had lost. I even went as far as writing a letter to the son I would never have. At that point, I thought God had a really twisted sense of humour for keeping me alive when all I had lived for had been taken from me. But, as I would soon realise, God knows what he is doing even if I do not.

<