Is life meant to be meaningful?

A statement I made to my husband opened up an interesting line of thinking. I’ve been feeling trapped for a while irrespective of my life being quite nice. I told my husband ‘Life seems meaningless’ and he immediately shot back with ‘we under-estimate the power of monotony’. Though I disagreed with him saying that just leading a monotonous life, not expecting big changes or variety everyday need not necessarily mean being happy, I also started asking myself what a meaningful life meant. Of course, when one asks that question one always most likely ends up with the answer that life’s meaning can be different from one person to another. However, a different question emerged in my head. Is life really supposed to have a meaning? Or is it just meant to be lived without reading too much to it. One of the oddities of the human mind is that it is always searching for ways to fulfil the longing of the brain to rationalize whatever it does. Even when life just goes on, we are trying to read into why my life is a particular way and why not some other way. This is of course distinctively different from how a child would think. That brings me to the next question, ‘Is that why children are happier than adults?’ Children tend to get on with life not trying to understand why they do something the way they do, thereby ending up with a variety of experiences. It is of course a pity that the age at which children turn to adults(and thereby asking all these questions of life) is becoming lower and lower nowadays with all of us including the environment in which children are growing up putting pressure on them to think like adults. And I am not even talking here about all those children who are forced to fend for themselves!

A couple of years ago, I was not very clear about what I wanted to do with my life and constantly thought of finding something that will keep me busy and happy. I know I now have something like that with the job I have and the wonderful family I have. But that hasn’t quite stopped the thinking. I now think of how long can this go on and is this really what I ultimately what. I know that I am not one of those ‘happy go lucky’ people as one would put it and probably won’t be able to stop the thinking. However, I am quite enthused that I am thinking enough to understand that this is just a part of being human and that the answers may never make sense after a while. At least, that to me is a start to being able to let go off thinking all the while and trying just to live life. And that is probably what my husband meant by ‘the power of monotony’. The monotony of just living life – as I can see it now, that can be quite powerful in itself!