I used to tell people that the meaning of life is life.  My understanding of that statement has changed, or rather evolved, over the years.  In the beginning it meant that life had its own purpose, that it wasn’t something we were supposed to figure out.  Later it suggested that we create meaning out of what we put into life.

Today this statement has been turned inside out.  Where does your attention go when you hear the word, life?  What do you think of?  When someone asks you to tell them about your life, you’ll likely give them a dissertation highlighting events and milestones along your journey.

Whatever has happened in our past is now only a memory.  It exists nowhere but within our imagination.  Extensive research has proven that our memories are volatile, details rapidly morph into something else or vanish altogether.  In a short while the vast majority of our words and deeds have vanished, not only from our own mind but also from the memories of every participant and witness.

What is left?  Crumbs, but those tiny morsels are the seeds of meaning.  We remember them because of their impressions.  Consider a typical day.  We are bombarded with information, stimulated by sounds, sights, and smells.  Most of it we ignore.  But even that which we pay attention to is quickly forgotten.

The meaning of a life will not be found out there in the external world.  It is something created within each of us.  If two individuals, biological twins, were to walk through life hand-in-hand, experiencing the same reality, they would still form unique impressions.

At some base level every human being is the same.  We have feelings, hopes, dreams, desires.  We seek pleasure and avoid pain.  We are brothers and sisters bound together by a shared biology.  Yet, at the moment of our birth, perhaps even before that, we are uniquely established as an individual human being, a self.

For 25 years I designed and wrote computer software for major corporations.  My work was important.  I was important.  Today, every single line of code that I wrote is no longer functioning on any computer system.  It exists only as a memory.  At the time my work appeared to be meaningful.  This is the way of the world.  For most of us, our contributions will disappear with our final breath.  Where is the meaning?

If you believe in an afterlife then anything of real significance will still be with you.  Your actions and efforts, no matter how grand, will not follow you.  Only the essence will matter.  In truth that is all that really matters.  Why are you doing or saying whatever it is you’re doing or saying?  The details disintegrate.  The meaning will live on within you.

The meaning of life is the substance of each individual.  Each of us must eventually stand before the mirror of life and witness the truth of our self.  On that day we will know the meaning of our life in simple terms, in the gifts we have shared and suffering we have allowed.

In the end the meaning of our life is straightforward, it is who we are inside.