The Meaning of Life

Posted on by Opher

Having lived a long life I have had time to think and review. These are my thoughts on what constitutes a worthwhile existence:

a. I find it admirable for a person to spend their life in the realms of creativity – dance, writing, drama, poetry, art, design and music.

b. I find it highly worthy to spend one’s life helping others, in caring professions – education, nursing, care, medicine, charitable work and surgery

c. I think it fulfilling to spend life in exploration, discovery, science and adventure

d. I would find it worthwhile to spend life in close harmony with nature

e. I would see the worth in reading, introspection and research

f. I think every life should have room for passion and appreciation of the arts

g. I even think there is a place for personal spiritual exploration

h. I can see the value of love of family and the joy of relationship

What I despise is a shallow life based on the acquisition of wealth, the endless pursuit of sex and pleasure, the joy of destruction or violence, the drudgery of routine existence, the seeking of status and social standing, the vacuousness of mundane entertainment and the horror of organised religion.

For while all life, to quote Roy Harper’s words, is meaningless meaning, and ultimately has no purpose, every second is precious; the universe is wondrous and our time is short. Making the most of it seems the imperative.

A worthwhile life is surely worth striving for?

To spend time in trivia is a great waste.

Life has meaning if we choose to use it wisely.

Legacies – An extract from The Death Diaries

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I am currently writing a book called The Death Diaries. It is an ongoing work. I intend to log the thoughts, ideas and feeling that surround my own death.

Who knows?

My death may be sudden and none of it ever get published. But it may be slow and I will be able to record it in words.

Time will tell.

In the meantime I occasional dip into it to write something about death. I’ve been writing it for over a decade as I contemplate my eventual demise.

I wrote this section this morning:

Legacies.

I proudly said to my son Henry that I had just gained another contract to write a book on Ian Dury. We talked about it a while. I explained that there was no money in it but that I greatly enjoyed writing these books. He said that it was good to have a legacy.

That sent me thinking.

A legacy.

We all have a legacy. Sometimes that legacy is measured in achievements, wealth or power. Sometimes it is measured in love, altruism and the help one gave. Sometimes we leave behind buildings, or change nations, bring in policies that affect millions, and sometimes it is a memory of the help you gave to the old lady next door.

We all leave a legacy.

Some legacies resound down the ages. Others are soon forgotten.

Even the evil of Hitler and Stalin’s legacies of cattle trucks, death camps, gulags and torture chambers is perverted with time. Even Pol Pot and Mao will be revered by many and the killing fields and horrors of the cultural revolution reinvented into myths.

All legacies eventually crumble to dust. Good or bad.

When I am no longer here and my possessions distributed to the four winds, my books, records and clothes dispensed with, what will my legacy be?

My four wonderful children? My grandchildren and the progeny I will never know?

It is true, as Henry said, the books I have written will live on after me. But the fact of things existing after a person’s death is not necessarily a legacy. That depends if people read them and are moved by them. For me a legacy infers an impact.

Perhaps my legacy partly lives on in the lives of all those I taught during the many years in education? The children I loved and raised? The partner I’ve shared so much with? The sum total of my experience and how that impacted on others, on life upon this planet?

For legacies are our greatest failing, our biggest sin. This desire for immortality. This need to make a mark upon the world.

Perhaps my greatest legacy will be to return my body to the cycle of nature, for it to rot and be absorbed into the bodies of billions, for bacteria, fungus and worms to gorge and sustain themselves, to give back to this incredible fragile cycle of life upon this jewel of a planet.

I should be content with that. But I am not. I am human.

I’m off to write a book on Ian Dury.

Poetry – Reflectin’

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Reflectin’

The sun is at its lowest ebb.

The fire roars.

The mulled wine flows

And laughter resounds

With friends and family.

A time to reflect on life –

On a year that has gone.

A time to assess,

And a time to look ahead

To what is to come

With new resolve.

Out of the ashes

Of what might have been

Comes the phoenix

Of new possibilities.

If one is clear-sighted enough

To learn from ones mistakes

And take those lessons forward.

In the flickering flames

Of the dying fire

Are forged new ideas

And the determination

To make them real.

Opher 24.12.2018

Sometimes, on a winter’s night, it is good to sit in front of the last remains of the fire, to feel its glow, watch the last flames licking, and think. There is a mesmerizing hypnotism to a fire. It draws on in and allows great introspection.

What new resolve is forged in those flames?