What is the meaning of life?
That’s a question I used asked myself very often.
It felt like everything was just a loop of doing the same things over and over and over.
Day in and day out.
It never seemed to make sense to me.
Why are we (even) here (in the first place), and why are we here for only such a short amount of time?
Why do we keep on doing the same things?
What is the purpose?
The what and the why of life.
You probably expect me to give you an answer now and then everything is done and settled, and I too would expect that.
But it’s simply not that easy.
I tried to find the answer for a very long time.
Digging around everywhere, trying different websites, different things to do, taking advice from different people.
But to my surprise, there was no clear answer.
There was no answer at all.
This question has remained unanswered for eternity and probably will remain that way too.
The narrative of my life has always been about performing well in school and getting a good job.
That’s what I was told to set as my highest goals.
This was the way to live life.
Getting a good job equaled a life without problems.
I think most people recognize this, since that’s the way school and society teach.
Let’s just say I didn’t really like this way of living.
I could not in my wildest dream even imagine myself living my life like this.
I found it to be very, not fulfilling at all.
I had a very unusual perspective of life than most people:
A never-ending loop of doing the same things day in and day out, without any clear purpose as to why, that then transpired into nothingness and even more unclarity.
Waking up, taking a shower, eating breakfast, brushing my teeth, commuting to work, working, having a short break for lunch, working again, commute back home and maybe shop groceries on the way back, cooking dinner, washing the dishes from the dinner, watching TV, brushing my teeth again and finally going to bed. If children are present, the list of chores get drastically extended.
Only to then repeat the exact same thing for 5 days straight.
The time simply does not exist to live like this and neither does the energy.
(Of a 24-hour day, our only free time is a couple of hours in the evening, and that is still no guarantee, where the only thing we can really do is to watch TV or read a book.)
Then we have the weekends, the most exciting part of the week. And yet most of the time I’m too tired to do anything of importance because of exhaustion from working the entire week. So most often than not, the weekends get used as a recharge to prepare for yet another week of doing the exact same thing, all over again.
This is the interpretation of life that society preaches.
This is what school teaches. This is what school and work is all about.
What a fun way to live, right?…
It’s not that weird in my opinion that the depression rates are as high as they are.
15 million in the US alone.
Those are 15 million regular people.
Like you, like me.
You see the issue here?
I never understood why this is the supposed way to live.
– Well, to earn money and to be able to survive I was told.
But this way of living wasn’t going to cut it for me.
Just doing the same things over and over and piling up a hill of depression that get more difficult to climb the longer we do it.
I wanted purpose, I wanted to be happy and enjoy the things I was about to do.
That’s all I was asking for.
I realized early in life that money is not everything.
That money and a “great job” should not be the main focal point of my life.
It isn’t the key to happiness.
Yet it’s the core principle that get taught all around.
Have a great job and high income and your life will be amazing.
That’s just not how it works.
There’s a lot more to it than that.
Money is great and an essential tool if used correctly and we absolutely do need it but it should not be the main focal point of one’s life.
That’s why our lives feel depressing, because everything’s about money.
Instead, happiness and fulfillment should be.
The things that make me enjoy myself and the things I actually like and want to do over and over.
The little things in life.
The little things in life that I never seem to have time for because I’m too busy “living”.
The little things in life make me look stupid in other people’s eyes but are of huge importance to me.
I got told to get those things over with quickly because they had no purpose and I had “better things” to do.
Well to me they had purpose.
To me it was important and sometimes the only true purpose I could ask for.
I couldn’t even have that.
Why?
They exceeded the picture that society had painted and should therefore be ignored.
Huh!?
“You can’t only be doing the fun things”.
Huh!?
What’s the point then if it isn’t to have fun?
If it isn’t to enjoy what you’re doing?
If it isn’t to be happy?
And there’s nothing wrong with the people that commented these things because that’s the way they’ve been taught, and the people around them, and you and me.
I just decided to go against what everyone else was doing and thinking.
So then, what is the meaning of life?
What are we doing here on earth?
How can we learn to enjoy it despite having no clear answers, despite not knowing the why?
How can we learn to create our own answers and paths and living up to them?
It all starts with you as a person.
I’m the one that’s living my life.
I’m driving the vehicle of my life.
I decide which roads to take and which to avoid.
I decide what’s important to me and what isn’t.
I found a few things that made me smile just that tiny bit extra when doing them.
I realized those things are in fact the most important to me.
Those have now become the focus of my life and I base everything around them.
Not a stupid workplace, work comes second, or third now.
Since we are in fact here and since we are living.
Let’s not go cry in a corner feeling life is unfair.
That’s the comfortable way to live, and that’s what most people are doing.
And look at where that have gotten them.
Stop doing what most of the people are doing and let’s make the most out of life in a way that fits us.
This is me, this is my journey, and I’m here to share the things about life that we didn’t get taught in school.
The things I figured out on my own by trial and error.
Things that should be the #1 priority for everyone but somehow gets skipped.
How to live your life to the max and being happy.
How to enjoy the little things in life and feel fulfillment and purpose.
Let’s start living for real this time.
Let’s start living a great life – together.