What is the meaning of life? Is it to achieve a sense of happiness within ourselves? Is it to serve a higher power? Or are we all actually living in a simulation? Nobody knows the answer to this question, but that doesn’t stop people from trying to figure it out. People don’t like living in uncertainty and we try to find closure in life. We want to give life meaning, so many people make their own. I decided on its meaning four years ago.
From my sophomore to junior year of high school, I started asking this profound question. Though I’m sure this wasn’t on most high schoolers’ minds, I had experienced a series of events that made me wonder why I was even alive. During this time period, two of my close relatives had passed away. Upset, I turned to religion in hopes of coping with my grief. I shuffled between Catholic and Protestant churches for advice, but the advice I received from both churches was inconsistent. I thought, “If these two faiths serve the same god, how can they be so different?” While I was having this conflict of faith and dealing with the deaths of people I held so close, I was also taking acne medication that, as a side effect, made me depressed. I never told anyone of my condition because I desperately wanted to get rid of my acne, as it made me extremely self-conscious.
All these negative events in my life took a toll on my well-being. I couldn’t sleep for several nights and I even had a panic attack while driving. I had no proper way of handling the situation I was in, until one day in the spring of 2016.
I was driving on the road next to a local farm near my house. My family and I used to get produce from the family that ran the farm. As I was driving, I stopped and looked at the cows grazing in the field and I asked “What is their purpose?” I eventually came to a conclusion: they are born, they live, have children and die. I thought to myself, that’s exactly what we do; survive.
I believe in the greater good. From that day on, I decided I would go on living my life to help society. Nobody knows what happens, for sure, after death, just like nobody knows the meaning of life itself. The only thing we can know for sure is the world in front of us is real and our time here is limited. In our brief time alive, we must look after one another, because in the end, all that we may have is each other.