Why Life?

When I turned 70, it struck me that life wasn’t a quest, but more like a test. How much can you lose and still seek continuance, and why?

I lived my life balancing risk and reward, taking part in behaviours and actions that I thought held some human value. Caring to protect, to save, to watch over. All noble ideas, and yet, without a future that holds out ‘hope’ of some form of improvement, some means of ‘measurement’ that validates the rationale, what is the point?

It’s not like you are going to be the ‘first one’ to find some existential value that makes your ‘being’ worthy of continuance.

I mean, we all die?

A footnote in someone’s diary?

If you’re not Sir David Attenborough, and can look to a life of monumental achievement and value that ‘all men’ can take both solace and hope in the actions of, then what really does it matter?

All my life I have tested by mortality. Often, ‘thrill seeking’. What was its value? Why twenty near-death experiences? To what end?

When I look to what I truly mean to the world, it goes without saying that the answer is truly, — nothing.

Life without purpose is not achievement. And Life without true love to sustain life, is simply an endurance test.

Why is life, for some, so short?

Why is life unfair?

The Love of a Dog

Two years ago, my wife and I sought to own a dog. When your children are grown, and you become little more than an afterthought once a year, you seek to find a reason to ‘make a difference’ to someone, anyone.

When who you are or what you do no longer matter, it occurs that caring for the life of a dog, can be satisfying, even justification for continuance, for being.

Your ‘value’ to others, including your wife may well seem to be perfunctory. I often feel like an impediment to the life of ‘others’.

Maybe, if you weren’t ‘here’, they would find purpose and seize it?

And yet…

You matter, if only in the sense that the comfort you provide to your wife and your dog is what has become your chief focus, – that which justifies your value.

I recently read an article of a man whose love for his dog was so all encompassing, that when his dog passed in his arms, he too died, right at the moment of that realization. What was a wholly unnatural, yet natural beautiful death.

Heartbreak and loss can take life and all it represents, away from life.

The Test of Time Itself

Recently as I am want to do, I took a walk into a ravine known for the risks it imposes if one should choose to take the ‘road less travelled.’ I was standing at a precipice on a cliff where the river raged below, and I actually asked myself, “Could I survive this fall? Are you still skilled enough, lucky enough, determined enough to choose to survive?

As I wandered down what was the trail above the bank of the ravine, I came across a sign that read;

“Do not attempt to swim, or dive here. You will forfeit your life. Thirty-seven people have done exactly that in the waters below.”

Were their actions irrational? What led them to take the ‘plunge’ so to speak?

Was it circumstance? A moment of fleeting despair? Was it a test of sorts? A rationale that ‘should you survive’, you were meant for something ‘more, better or notable?’

Many people endure. Many people see maintaining life as noble. Why?

I say this not to be difficult or illustrate arrogance but to propose a serious question. What is the value of ‘life’ if that life provides no value to anyone?

At what point does value of one’s existence outweigh the value of a dignified death?

I write, early in the mornings, often, simply because pain, mostly physical precludes sleep, and in so doing I have to ask myself, “Is the beauty in the day to come, a sunrise, a ride on my motorcycle, capturing a moment in time electronically of the sheer beauty that naturally surrounds me of ‘value’.

At what point does, or will, pain become so pervasive, so limiting, that joy is no longer part of the equation?

And then, while I sit in contemplation, my dog jumps onto the couch and lays his head in my lap, and again, for the moment, the thoughts and emotions recede.

I have no idea why life has intrinsic value. To whom and for what purpose?

Once again today, I’ll shower, get dressed, take more pain killers and try to both ignore and understand what little value I have to provide to others now.

Maybe one morning I’ll have an epiphany. Maybe the answer will leap into view and I’ll care to act, or be impelled to.

For now, time is a test. One that just surviving means you are ‘still passing.’

I believe that ‘life’ is neither fair nor unfair. It simply is. Millions of moments, events, actions, and circumstances place us into what ‘is’. We all simply react in response.

There is no judgement by the ‘universe’ of the value of that moment and ‘our existence’ in it.

There will be another, just now.

And so, without any ‘knowing’ of what the value of existence truly is, I wish you ‘meaning’.

May you find peace, love, happiness and meaning, enough to last through ‘time’.