Summary: What is the meaning of life?

What is the meaning of life?  Many schools of thought exist which attempt to answer this question.  The soldier would have us believe that the meaning of life is to die gloriously in battle.  Theologians suggest that a meaningful life is one that is viewed as righteous and good in the eyes of God.  Some, like the fisherman, believe that it is something far more elemental than any of these things.  He finds meaning in the sunrise and gentle movements of the sea.  He studies the moon and the sky to predict the weather, and in doing so begins to understand the rhythms of nature.  The fisherman may not understand what he is learning, but something deep within his soul drives him towards the answers.  He has a head start on the soldier, the priest and the politician who look for meaning in the wrong places.

The meaning of life is found through observation.  Life surrounds us, in the sky, the sea, and the earth.  We must remove our blinders and watch it run its course.  The Romantic poet John Keats had the right idea, studying the nightingale and the "season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.". The great poets were observers.  They had a head start like the fisherman.  Those who really yearn to decipher the answers to life's questions will become observers in every sense of the word.  They will sit on a tree stump day in and day out and watch the curious creatures go about their business, until the creatures are no longer curious and the observer is as much a part of the woods as the stump itself, as described in Robert Frost's poem "Afield at Dusk":

"And rising full moon, sit me down
Upon the full moon's side of the first haycock
And lose myself amid so many alike."

But the observer's job does not end there.  The observer must understand the importance of the cycles, the seasons, the day and night, the crescent moon and the harvest moon.  Only then, when the observer has become an observer of cycles, has he truly observed.

The meaning of life is manifold, perhaps never to be fully comprehended by man.  But the fact that century after century mankind searches  for the answers to life's questions says something in itself, perhaps that we as human beings were brought into existence simply to ask this question, and sit on a tree stump listening for an answer.