The only meaning
People spend their whole lives hunting for the meaning of life, as if it were buried somewhere, heavy and serious, waiting to be dug up.
It isn’t. The only meaning of life is to have fun while we’re here. That’s the whole thing. Everyone keeps looking for something heavier and walks right past it.
The purpose of life is to be happy. — Dalai Lama
You don’t earn the right to enjoy it after the work is done. The enjoying is the work. You’re here for a blink — a few spins around the sun and you’re gone — and the only thing to do with that blink is to fill it with what you love. You don’t work music, you play it — it’s not about reaching the last note faster. Same with life: it’s for living, not for worrying, not about clocking out to retirement faster.
I used to think this was naive. Then I started paying attention and realized everyone who ever looked clearly arrived at the same simple place. The meaning is to mine as much magic as you can. How? Expand the patch of joy in your brain, clear the junk out of your life, do what’s interesting.
The Reading List
Dance First. Think Later.
618 Rules to Live By
Six hundred eighteen one-line answers to ‘how to live’ — collected from people who actually lived. Open anywhere; the title rule alone is worth the book.
So don’t take any of it too seriously. The party’s short. Find what’s fun and do that. That’s the meaning.