By just reading the question, “What is the meaning of life?” proves that you, as have billions of others at one time or another, entertained that question. It is the most basic and historically philosophical question of all mankind. By electing to read this essay, you are showing an interest in a question which has probably eluded us all – until now.

I’m not purporting to have come up with an answer to this ancient riddle overnight or after a concerted effort of some sort. No, I can’t recall ever spending much time focused on this question, exclusive of all other thoughts. However, as I’ve explained in another essay, I have occasionally “poked” various aspects of possible solutions into that part of my thinking processes which I have labeled as “Background Processing.” Occasionally a thought or phrase will come to mind and, after turning it around and examining it for a time, will shuffle it away for future use.

The first time that I can recall associating a “new” phrase with our question of the day was when I received, from the “vast unknown,” the statement, “The meaning of life is to know that there IS life.” Now, that concept, which has been buzzing around in my head for about a dozen years, worked for me … up to a point. However, it was never completely fulfilling and seemed to be missing something. Occasionally, I would toss the phrase around in my head, or insert it into a conversation, but generally it just took up residence in my Background Processing area and was just allowed to “ferment” or “age”.

Even the whole idea of an answer seemed to have a religious undertone to it. I think that somewhere in my early life, when I was feeling my way around various religions, I was often presented with the belief that the answer to the question was to serve or obey some god’s will. However, that always seemed like a rather restricted answer which allowed for no personally selective alternative. It brought to mind something I learned when I studied a meditation technique called Vipassana. They taught that before Buddha came on the scene, meditators in that time (2,500 years ago) only taught a form of meditation which was mind based. Buddha’s major innovation was that to properly meditate one has to inculcate the physical body into the meditative process.

A couple of months ago, I was watching a PBS show about Einstein with one of my older grandkids. The show was relating how Albert came up with his concept of space-time. It occurred to me that since time itself was a manmade concept, its infinite variables were established using our solar system as its base. Granted, it is hard to imagine our world functioning as it does without creating the concept of how many days it takes for Earth to go around the Sun, how fast light travels or even determining how fast a car is going or when we are due to be someplace … in space-time. This line of thought led me to my next rather simplistic sounding realization, “Time is a prime factor in how we measure change.”

When I started associating knowledge of life and time, the master of these two concepts almost immediately came to mind – Charles Darwin. Of course, he was the first to study the intricacies of change over time, as they applied to all living things. Those that were capable of modifying themselves and adapt to change were able to survive and even thrive. Those that couldn’t or didn’t, did not survive. At its essence, it is “Survival of the fittest.”

So how did I bring together all of these disparate pieces of this puzzle together in order to come up with an answer to our question? Well, by being as succinct as possible and by stating that the meaning of life is this:

In order to survive, we must accept that life is in a constant state of change and that – all change must be positive. The alternative, negative changes, will lead to our ultimate disappearance. To put it another way – retroaction, or even the rot of stagnation, is the road to oblivion.