The Meaning of Life

Years ago the immortal Monty Python, a name that means everything to anyone born before 1970 and almost nothing to those born after, created a film called The Meaning of Life.  It was vintage Python, filled with exploding men and Catholics singing Every Sperm is Sacred.  In a Python way it laughed at our own preoccupations, our own uniquely human thoughts.

The film began with a song:

Why are we here, what's life all about?
Is God really real, or is there some doubt?
Well tonight we're going to sort it all out,
For tonight it's the Meaning of Life.

What's the point of all this hoax?
Is it the chicken and the egg time, are we just yolks?
Or perhaps we're just one of God's little jokes,
Well ça c'est the Meaning of Life.

Is life just a game where we make up the rules,
While we're searching for something to say,
Or are we just simply spiraling coils,
Of self-replicating DNA.

In this life, what is out fate?
Is there Heaven and Hell? Do we reincarnate?
Is mankind evolving or is it too late?
Well tonight here's the Meaning of Life.

For millions this life is a sad vale of tears,
Sitting round with nothing to say,
While the scientists say we're just simply spiraling coils,
Of self-replicating DNA.

So just why, why are we here?
And just what, what, what do we fear?
Well çe soir, for a change, it will all be made clear,
For this is the Meaning of Life - c'est le sens de la vie,
This is the Meaning of Life.

As summer progresses my son's mind begins to wander.  It reminds me of the importance of focus in life and how the regrettable routine of work and home tends to give our minds structure and purpose all the while dangling the perception of something far more satisfying.  For Noah, when the routine of school is not present his mind tends to think broader thoughts, contemplative and engaging.  Concepts that are frustrating and without answer.  

He seemed melancholy and reflective a few nights back and I took the opportunity to sit by him and talk. 

"What's wrong?" I asked him as I picked up a video game controller and commenced riding a stallion through out the wild west.

"I just don't understand what the meaning of life is Pop.  I mean why am I here and what does my life accomplish?"  He sighed and continued, "I just don't understand why I am alive sometimes." 

Oh my son must have inherited a contemplative gene from my own genetic spirals, I thought.  One that leaves the mind disturbed and unsatisfied with a lack of answers.  It is a feeling of wanting a drink of water yet never feeling satisfied as you gulp the liquid down.

"It makes me feel depressed sometimes Pop.  Is that normal?  Why are we here Pop?"  

I thought for a bit as I navigated the stallion across a desert landscape.  Oh my introspective, existential child who on earth could you have inherited such questions, such feelings from?

"I guess you have your life time to find that place."  I told him.  "To answer those questions."  

"But life is so short Pop, I want to live for much longer, to know what happens."  

"If life had no limit, we would not know what memories to cherish." I told him.  "You must look at life for the positive things.  Relish each day alive and try not to look too far in the future.  Think about all that is good around you.  If you were religious the questions would be answered for you by faith.  If you are not, then you must settle with your human inability to understand."

"But what happens when you die Pop?"

"I don't know son, but it is a question that we will all eventually have answered.  Just don't feel that every question needs an immediate answer."

Noah is such a beautiful boy.  He is a beautiful boy with a beautiful mind looking out at a world he is still discovering.  So many thoughts, so many emotions.  So much love and sadness yet to experience.  Yet with sadness there is no joy.  With hate there is no love.

In the film a woman answers the question with the following:

"Try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations."

When Noah was an infant I held him in my arms.  I lifted him up and propping him on my arm I looked into his eyes.  He would look back at me, smile and listen to the rhythm of my words, "I don't care what you become son," I told him, "just be a kind man."

"We all must decide what to do with our lives Noah, it is all we have.  Some will think only of themselves and others will sacrifice for others.  As you grow older you will most likely realize that you can't change the world.  That you are just another life working it's way to an end.  That doesn't mean however that you can't leave something.  Always try to give a little more than you take and in the end, you will come out ahead."  My galloping horse reared on the screen and my western hero paused to pick a flower.

My son still has a few weeks of freedom, of time to be a child.  How we all remember those days and wish we could reach for them once again.  This time soon will pass and Algebra will rule.  English lessons and science tests will replace contemplative thought as the unknown will be replaced with the pressures of the present.  The questions that torment will recede yet never disappear from the dark corners of the mind.

Perhaps tonight I will seize the opportunity to harvest the few weeks of existential thought remaining and offer him the final words of Monty Python.

Whenever life gets you down, Mrs. Brown
And things seem hard or tough
And people are stupid, obnoxious or daft
And you feel that you've had quite enu-hu-hu-huuuuff

Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
And revolving at 900 miles an hour
That's orbiting at 19 miles a second, so it's reckoned
A sun that is the source of all our power
The sun and you and me, and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm, at 40,000 miles an hour
Of the galaxy we call the Milky Way

Our galaxy itself contains 100 billion stars
It's 100,000 light-years side-to-side
It bulges in the middle, 16,000 light-years thick
But out by us it's just 3000 light-years wide
We're 30,000 light-years from galactic central point
We go round every 200 million years
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe

The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whiz
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light you know
Twelve million miles a minute and that's the fastest speed there is
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure
How amazingly unlikely is your birth
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space
Because there's bugger all down here on Earth