Death and life are like front and back of the same coin. Acceptance of death gives meaning to life and gives us the opportunity to understand what life is.
We have a culture to live life as if to survive and to hush the idea of death, to avoid this topic of discussion. Alan Watts explores this taboo with a different approach, that death and life are like fronts and backs of the same coin. Death gives meaning to life and gives us the opportunity to understand what life is all about.
On this video by Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, he answers the question “What is the meaning of life” asked by a 6 year old child at the Wilbur Theatre Boston on January 2015
I think people ask that question on the assumption that meaning is something you can look for and then,I found it. Here’s the meaning. And it doesn’t consider the possibility that meaning is something you create, you manufacture it for yourself and for others.
So when I think of meaning’ in life, I ask, did I learn something today that I didn’t know yesterday, bringing me a little closer to knowing all that can be known in the universe? If I live a day and I don’t know a little more than I did the day before, I think I wasted that day. To think brings you closer to nature. To learn how things work gives you power to influence events. Gives you power to help people who may need it power to help yourselves to shape a trajectory.
So when I think of what is the meaning of life, to me that’s not an eternal, unanswerable question to me that is in arm’s reach of me everyday.
