Mans search for meaning
Everything begins with an idea. An idea grows with time, and man; homo sapiens the wise creature loves ideas. For ideas is where he sees pattern from its pre-existence of origin to eventual conclusion. As it is, it may seem harmless, but how can a dead man influence one who are living now? It is of course the idea which is no more in its original essence but has evolved to something else. Man as a evolving being himself, he must define his evolving being, his different states of mental and physical existence with the number of ideas he is equipped with. Idea is more than a tool or weapon it is akin to the essence of his existence. Influenced by ideas that are evolving time and again, in tools of social network such as Facebook, Twitter and so on, we are influenced by those which leaves us with a deep impression to our inner being, a kind of connotation. We seek justice for those who are not, make fun of those who seem to be ignorant or stupid and so on, we become the keyboard warrior.
Ideas, ideas and ideas! Surrounded by these in our everyday life, still we search for more. As it is in our prime directive, to want for more and more and more, we search for meaning that defines our being and those which influence the being. We start to doubt and have critical questions to the ideas that define us and have defined us so far and we try to change the way we think of ourselves and this leads to the search of meaning. The truth, that is not the truth, meaning that is not the meaning, in surface though it is so. Doing the same thing and expecting a different result is no more than a child's tantrum, thus it is a must that there is a necessity of a different approach with a different perspective as foundation to find meaning in both thought and action. Some learn by thinking most by doing. Mistakes and errors are must during the learning process, be it in terms of love, friendship, material acquisition, adventure and such. The meaning we perceive will never be perfect for the brain that we have is wired not to be perfect, we are most of the times emotional being. And thus ideas that evoke emotion matter to us most.
Take the example of nationality, it was never our intention to be born in a country that is so different from the rest of the world. Birth is not our idea but the idea is of living, loyalty to the country one is born is given, is expected, being disloyal brings the whole weight of the idea of society and nationality to your early demise in the social status or even your identity. Identity crisis is something which a man cannot normally give up, nor the idea of gender or most personally if he is stripped by the concept of ego 'I', what will become of him? Idea of freedom from the idea of mortal shackles. Or realization of the narcissistic side of one who may not have seen prior to the identity crisis. Man changes, for better or for worse, yet his thirst for knowledge, for ideas and more so for meaning never ceases. He may drink till death he finds meaning in the tipsy state, he may work to the bones; finding satisfaction in the completion in the tasks, thereby finding meaning, or may be not, maybe the drunk guy is just addicted to the feeling of meaning that is just outside his grasp and the workaholic, he maybe just trying to finding meaning that he had lost, meaning of promotion, better pay, a career. Maybe
The search for meaning has been passed down from generations to generations, from father to son, from mother to daughters. We search it in the care we give to the child, the satisfaction when we see the content face of our progeny, who is so centered in him/herself, uncaring to the tiredness etched in his/her caretaker. As we grow up, we find ourselves open to new sensations, relationship, knowledge, and basically ideas of those which are so novel. We tend to try them, intoxicate our being to them, be it sex, drugs, music, art, money (spending and earning), some of us success in the ideas that propel to success in terms of finance or social status or may something else overlooked by the predecessor but most of us don't find the success, there comes the idea of frustration, of jealousy depression dark times in deeper note or just constancy clothed in the guise of normalcy. The idea of being normal and being lauded as extra is always to side of the coin man finds attracted and hypnotized into. Thus the idea grows to his eventual doom or supremacy. As we grow old, these idea lose their luster, like it did before, when we were warned by those who cared about us but came before us, our parents or grand or any of those oldies, now we are the oldies and we realize we should shift our focus to a different meaning, meaning towards not enjoyment but meaning in the responsibility which we have realized only through the hard experience beaten to our body and mind.
Meaning becomes clear only when we experience it on our own. We will find it only when we taste its sweetness, its bitterness till our soul tingles to the core. We will find and explore and make the meanings our own, to the satisfaction we need to rationalize and emotionalize to balance only through experience. Lives after lives until the life burns out the shine within us, we will search for the meaning consciously and unconsciously, it may shift. for e.g. love for the spouse shifts to the child, the love may be still there but the part of the essence is shared more to the new born. At the end, our body does not function as it used to be nor our mind, but when we have ourselves when we give up all the material responsibility to our progeny, we only have time on the hand to relive the life in memories. We share them with some and keep most with the self, our dark secrets, foolish highs, glory and all those, then the true search for meaning starts, for we have nothing else to do except to search and wait for the eventual finality, THE END.
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