Life
I was posed a question last night - What is the meaning of life? It's a difficult question to answer and my reply was nothing short of ambiguous. In other words, I was struck speechless. What exactly is the meaning of life? After much thought last night, I think I might have found an answer and one which I am fairly pleased with. (I sometimes wish I was a religious person because the answer would be too easy and divine - to serve God. However, to bluntly put, that is just laziness. God being the answer is simply not a reason good enough that I can conform to unless the God you believe in is the same as mine - Science and Mathematics or the Flying Spaghetti Monster.)
Life, as I see it, is an amazing continuous biological cycle. All living things grow with nourishment, live and only to eventually die. It is a beautiful simplicity that is intertwined with a vast complexity. We have come a long way since 4.6 billion years ago when planets accrue to form our solar system and when only several elements are present. No one really knows why or how life existed but some believe it occurred from a play in chemistry and through evolution over the past 3.5 billion years, here we are.
Humans diverged from apes some 4-8 million years ago which geologically, is a very recent event. It depends on how far back you wish to go, but I comfortably believe that us humans and all other living things are fundamentally the same. We are a product of evolution and we have all evolved to behave differently in ways that work best for us. We seem to like believing we are a far higher class of organism on this planet due to our ability of higher intelligence. That is undoubtedly true but I also believe that take is a little too skewed and other lifeforms do deserve more credit. We have a penchant for underestimating the complexity and beauty of other lifeforms.
I have always felt the human existence on this planet is comparable to those of ants, just in a totally different scale. Most people would disagree with me but I don't see why they should. On a human scale, ants are like specks of sand but on a global or universal scale, we are just as tiny as ants. I shall make a quote from Wikipedia about them - 'Ants thrive in most ecosystems, and may form 15–25% of the terrestrial animal biomass. Their success has been attributed to their social organisation and their ability to modify habitats, tap resources, and defend themselves. Ant societies have division of labour, communication between individuals, and an ability to solve complex problems'. Does that spark any familiarity? We share more similarities than we tend to imagine. It is this that made me deduce what our life is about (read on).
I have come to terms that there is no 'deeper' meaning to life. We are just here because we are. Just like how the trees and birds that live amongst us are here. We work hard, strive to make a living and thrive in a society because we have been wired to function this way just like how ants were made to work the way they do. And if you were to step on an ant, its life would just end there and then. Nothing more, nothing less. If I die tomorrow, then I die. It will be no different to the ants death as it is just death. And when a baby is born, a new cycle is created. One that will have a road of triumph and tribulation ahead of it until it eventually finds its way back to Earth to complete another cycle of life. We do not need to analyse further what life is because it is there, all around us. Life is a dynamic system - it comes, it goes, it changes.
So, what life truly is to me is actually a wondrous celebration of evolution and diversity. And it is evident - no two living things are the same. We are all different and special in various ways and yet still so similar in just as many ways. What's a better way to celebrate evolutionary diversity than to embrace it. So while I am here (with little choice about my existence and I don't intend to die just yet), why don't I maximise what I have. To celebrate diversity would be to accept all that surrounds us and to make the best of what we have been given - accept and embrace the differences in people and all other living things that make everyday interesting, continuously make forward progresses/improvements with our intelligence that has brought us to this modern age, and live for the moment through the sharing of joys of love and laughter that forms our most primordial instincts.
Life, as I see it, is an amazing continuous biological cycle. All living things grow with nourishment, live and only to eventually die. It is a beautiful simplicity that is intertwined with a vast complexity. We have come a long way since 4.6 billion years ago when planets accrue to form our solar system and when only several elements are present. No one really knows why or how life existed but some believe it occurred from a play in chemistry and through evolution over the past 3.5 billion years, here we are.
Humans diverged from apes some 4-8 million years ago which geologically, is a very recent event. It depends on how far back you wish to go, but I comfortably believe that us humans and all other living things are fundamentally the same. We are a product of evolution and we have all evolved to behave differently in ways that work best for us. We seem to like believing we are a far higher class of organism on this planet due to our ability of higher intelligence. That is undoubtedly true but I also believe that take is a little too skewed and other lifeforms do deserve more credit. We have a penchant for underestimating the complexity and beauty of other lifeforms.
I have always felt the human existence on this planet is comparable to those of ants, just in a totally different scale. Most people would disagree with me but I don't see why they should. On a human scale, ants are like specks of sand but on a global or universal scale, we are just as tiny as ants. I shall make a quote from Wikipedia about them - 'Ants thrive in most ecosystems, and may form 15–25% of the terrestrial animal biomass. Their success has been attributed to their social organisation and their ability to modify habitats, tap resources, and defend themselves. Ant societies have division of labour, communication between individuals, and an ability to solve complex problems'. Does that spark any familiarity? We share more similarities than we tend to imagine. It is this that made me deduce what our life is about (read on).
I have come to terms that there is no 'deeper' meaning to life. We are just here because we are. Just like how the trees and birds that live amongst us are here. We work hard, strive to make a living and thrive in a society because we have been wired to function this way just like how ants were made to work the way they do. And if you were to step on an ant, its life would just end there and then. Nothing more, nothing less. If I die tomorrow, then I die. It will be no different to the ants death as it is just death. And when a baby is born, a new cycle is created. One that will have a road of triumph and tribulation ahead of it until it eventually finds its way back to Earth to complete another cycle of life. We do not need to analyse further what life is because it is there, all around us. Life is a dynamic system - it comes, it goes, it changes.
So, what life truly is to me is actually a wondrous celebration of evolution and diversity. And it is evident - no two living things are the same. We are all different and special in various ways and yet still so similar in just as many ways. What's a better way to celebrate evolutionary diversity than to embrace it. So while I am here (with little choice about my existence and I don't intend to die just yet), why don't I maximise what I have. To celebrate diversity would be to accept all that surrounds us and to make the best of what we have been given - accept and embrace the differences in people and all other living things that make everyday interesting, continuously make forward progresses/improvements with our intelligence that has brought us to this modern age, and live for the moment through the sharing of joys of love and laughter that forms our most primordial instincts.
