The meaning of life and stuff

So, what is the meaning of life ?

The question keeps popping into my head these days. It always has, I guess, but it’s been bothering me even more, lately. Frankly it's quite annoying. I mean I’d rather be left alone, left to enjoy eating Fry’s chocolate Turkish delight or drinking tea or beer or listening to the Velvet Underground or whatever, you know ? But no. Hm-hm. The Question won’t leave me five minutes’ peace. Not one single day of respite.

What makes things even more frustrating is that as a christian you’re supposed to have all of your shtuff together, you're supposed to have things more or less worked out, or at least that’s what the more sanctified (sanctimonious?) believers expect of you. You’re supposed to accept that you’re here for a fixed purpose (whatever that purpose might be) and that’s that. But it’s not as simple as that. Nothing ever is. (Except perhaps biting into a chocolate bar.) Because meaning doesn’t only come down to purpose. There’s also the question of identity. Even if you have a purpose in life, you can still wonder who you are, how, and why.

Sometimes I envy the freethinkers. No really. I really do. At least for them, the meaning of life is that there is no meaning – or at the very least, that meaning must be figured out or created out of scratch by oneself. I like that idea, probably because I’m a proud git and don’t like to have meaning shoved down my throat. I also envy the more naïve people (or maybe they’re just people of greater faith?), precisely because of the fact that they can swallow meaning (or truth, or purpose, or whatever you want to call it) as if it was maple syrup. I wish I could. At least I’d have some kind of solid framework. Still, I cross my fingers and hope that if I don’t know who/what/why I am, hopefully a Higher Power does.

Maybe the HG2G super-computer was right. Maybe the answer to life, the universe and everything really is 42.


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