The Meaning and Purpose

The meaning and purpose of life and everything else -- is simply to get better, no matter what one is doing.  That is the simplicity of life and everything one is doing -- and not simply to repeat what one is doing for as long as one can.  That makes life and everything one does  -- meaningless.  Yet that is what many people do -- thinking that is the whole object of life -- and why it becomes more meaningless every day -- rather than more meaningful.  So that is what one must ask of oneself in everything they do:  Am I getting better or worse?

Obviously, that question takes on greater importance in age and time -- that is the ultimate test of everything one does.  Is it possible one asks, to keep on improving throughout life -- or does there come a time and age at which only getting worse is possible and realistic?  That is the question and challenge of every moment.

We invariably fail when we begin to ask that question wrongly -- in thinking we can only do what we have only done before -- and not move on to do things differently -- which makes improvement not only possible, but easy, particularly and especially, when the familiar and routine, becomes problematical and difficult.  Therein lies the problem -- and quandary.  The familiar and old, have become the difficult, and even impossible -- and the only way, is to make it easier again, by finding some other way -- in which improvement is not only possible, but necessary and inevitable.

But the problem is that we never seek and explore another way -- but keep trying to do the difficult and impossible, harder -- even if it kills us, rather than to find an easier way -- even if it is as simple as moving in the most basic ways.  Often, that is because we have forgotten those lessons we formerly learned -- and have forgotten because they worked, and thus we abandoned them, or simply took them for granted.

Yet that is the reason we often hang onto to those things we have forgotten why we have them -- not because they no longer work, but we no longer use them -- but there may be something else we can use better now and more productively, but refuse to embrace as what we must now.  Of course it is preferable to embrace them willingly rather than reluctantly, and with great resistance.  That is the challenge of the new, undiscovered and untried.  That does not need to be the more difficult -- but in fact, is the easier way -- that we simply refuse to adopt as they way it must be now.  That is especially true when the old ways used to work -- but no longer do now, and instead of changing, we think it has become hopeless, because everything seems to have changed -- as they always will.

But individually and personally, can one keep changing with those times -- or will one continue to keep on doing what one has always done before, even when they are no longer working? -- and maybe they never worked so well at all?  One will never know that -- unless they try something else -- that might.  Otherwise, they think there is nothing else -- and nothing works anymore, even if they used to -- but not anymore, and it never occurs to them, that maybe it did not work at all.

That would not be the exception, but the rule -- with most things in life.  Thus frequently, what we thought to be true -- no longer is, and the opposite is now true, or what is now accepted as the truth of the matter.  So the problem is what we believed to be true -- and never bothered to find out otherwise -- until many years later, and hopefully not too late.

But if it is still a problem, and getting worse, we really have to do something about it, and obviously differently, or it simply will continue to get worse -- and the whole object in life and everything we do -- is to get better, and we often lose sight of that, as busy and committed as we have come to what doesn't work -- and no amount of time, energy and commitment will change that -- because we are on the wrong path, and will not accept that. 

That is the simple truth of all we do.  We have to find an easier (better) way -- when what we have been doing, is not working, and no amount of more -- will make a difference.