Most reasonably self-aware people have, at some point in their lives, asked things like:

“Who am I?”

“Where did we (humanity) come from?”

“What is themeaning of this life?”

“What happens when this life is over?”

Honestly to not ask these and other questions is to be nearly dead already. Of course that’s just my opinion.

What fascinates me is the circular nature of these questions regarding the real meaning of life. New questions lie just behind any answers we come up with, and there’s no concrete way to be certain any of our thoughts on the matter are accurate.

The man of science can say there is superior evidence to suggest evolution rather than creation. Maybe there is.

But the spiritual philosopher can challenge this by pointing out that it’s not really possible at this state in human development to rest a case of such magnitude on our very limited capabilities. For example: no matter how refined dating technology becomes, the fact is we have a very finite window of direct observation; we can’t say with real authority that factors don’t shift after enough time (say 10,000 years or so) and thereby invalidate the initial premise of the entire system.

It’s ludicrous to insist that our theories of what happened millions of years ago are immovable knowledge. In fact such a stance is no better than the cult-minded religious fanatic who will not accept any reason, logic, or intuition outisde of her own theology.

My point in all this is simple: We can’t say with provable authority that any one explanation to our grandest questions of how and why is incorrigible.

So anyone who REALLY wants to know what the meaning of life might be, is left to accept the fact that no satisfactory explanation is likely to be made available. If you are sincerely not trying to prove or validate your own belief system, you will at some point have to accept that we have only our deepest personal feelings and a few scientific probabilities.

It is for this reason that I suggest having a mind that is open to anything and attached firmly to nothing. This is actually the advice of Dr. Wayne Dyer, and I endorse it fully.

We can and should find peace in our own definitions of what life is, who we are, and what (if anything) we are to do about the whole affair. At the same time it’s quite liberating to accept that “proof” in the strictest use of the term may not be possible to obtain.