The Meaning of Life
What is the meaning of life? This is the easiest question.
The most destructive lie in the universe might be that this question is unknown or unknowable. It is ever known and incredibly simple. The mystery lies within the application of and journey towards this simple answer.
The meaning of life is to adventure towards beauty.
It is to selflessly risk one’s whole self in order to beautify the world. To adventure is to run out into the unknown; it is to face fear and failure as part of the process; it is to take a stand personally, in close relationships, in your job, and in the broader world that might cost you dearly. It is to embrace the vastness that this world offers. There is no life so vanilla that it is void of the opportunity to make such principled stands. Beauty is that which is. Beauty is the perfect balance between form and function; it is the holy tension between yin and yang, the feminine and masculine. Beauty, like the best things in this life, is free. Beauty lingers; it is rarely the fastest; it is thee mystery, and its expanse is an endless ocean.
The term selfless risk is almost too foreign to be known by those who live in our modern western age of comforts. What is the extent of selfless risk? Are you someone who lives that lifestyle?
Let me frame it this way; would you be a Nazi if you lived in WWII-era Germany? Of course you would. Unless you can show how you have stood for something that has cost you dearly, you most definitely would have been a Nazi or, at best, someone who silently rubbernecked their way through it; yeah maybe you would have spoken up to your friends, but never in a public way, you would not have spoken truth to power. We all like to think we would be Schindler. Sadly there are always very few Schindlers. There are always few true adventurers.
If there were more Schindlers, the public would never get to the point where it allowed an atrocity to take place. Evil has only and will only find its position through apathy and applause from the populous. Every evil event of every generation will only be morally responded to by the thinking and brave few.
Subtract adventure and beauty from anything, and it dies. Subtract adventure from your job, and you will leave or hate it. Subtract beauty from your marriage, and you will leave or hate it. And so on and so on.
Add adventure and beauty to anything, and it flourishes. Add adventure to your marriage, and it will thrive; more than a rock to weather storms it will be a high dive so that you might willingly dive into them. Add beauty to your job, and you will change the industry; more than wealth, you will find what it means to wake up with real purpose.
While embracing adventure is certainly to embrace hardship, it is also to equally embrace the overcoming of those hardships. It is to embrace victories that matter, victories that bring new and beautiful things to the earth. For as long as you do not quit, you win.
Real joy is only found in beauty realized through adventure.
Hold Tension, Be Vast.Remember, restoration alone brings victory.