This question is more important than the meaning of life. Your happiness depends on the answer.

What is the meaning of life?

Based on the number of talks, classes, documentaries and articles about “the meaning of life”, you would think this is the most important question you can ask.

But it’s not a very useful one.

How do we define life? Plants and humans? Earthly and otherwise? Majestic and bacterial? Everyone’s life or your life?

What we are really asking is…

What is the meaning of my life?

But this question is still limiting.

It implies there is only one thing that will give your life meaning. Try this experiment: starting listing off things you find meaningful. Can you come up with more than one? Of course you can.

There is no single meaning to your life. As Walt Whitman said:

I am large, I contain multitudes.

So we should try and re-write the question again…

What gives my life meaning?

Now we’re getting somewhere.

This question leads to a better place. It doesn’t imply that one thing, work, family, a hobby, a relationship, can give meaning to our entire life. Balance is required.

But what do you do with the answers?

Presumably, you discover what gives your life meaning, and spend more time on it. Because time is the only thing we really have.

So let’s ask the real question, even more directly…

How should I spend my time?

This is the only question that really matters.

It’s not just a philosophical question. It’s a solvable problem.

It’s the problem of how to spend the most precious resource you have, when you have no idea how much is left. Your happiness depends on it, because this is the question that never goes away.

You’ll need to answer this question again, day after day, moment after moment, for the rest of your life.

Your current answer is implied by your actions, the things you choose to do everyday. But unlike a test in school, this test has no deadline, and you can change your answer as many times as you like.

I hope you’ve found an answer you’re happy with. But if you haven’t, take out an eraser and try again.

I promise it’ll be worth your time.

This post was created with Typeshare