What is the Meaning of Life?
Why are we here?
Where are we going?
What do we do with the time we have?
These are the questions that have haunted humanity for as long as we've been able to think.
Philosophers, poets, scientists, and dreamers have spent lifetimes searching for answers, trying to find some grand design or hidden purpose behind our existence.
But maybe it’s not as complicated as we make it.
Maybe the meaning of life isn’t buried in ancient texts, or floating in some distant galaxy.
Maybe it’s not something to be found at all.
Maybe the meaning of life... is simply to live.
To exist.
To be.
If a Tree Falls in a Forest...
You’ve probably heard the old question:
If a tree falls in a forest and nobody is around to hear it, does it make a sound?
At first, it feels like a silly riddle.
Of course it makes a sound, right?
But dig deeper.
If "sound" means the experience of hearing, and no one is there to hear it, can we really say it made a sound at all?
Without something to perceive it, is "sound" even real, or just meaningless vibrations in the air?
If nothing experiences it, then sound itself isn't truly sound, is it?
It’s just potential, never fulfilled.
So ask yourself again:
If a tree falls in a forest and nobody is around to hear it, does it really make a sound?
And if something as simple as a sound needs a witness to be real...
What about reality itself?
Is reality something that exists on its own, or does it need life to fully bring it into being?
Does the Universe Exist Without Us?
Take the tree question and make it bigger.
Way bigger.
What if the entire universe is like that tree?
If a potential universe exists but there’s no life anywhere to experience it, no eyes to see, no minds to think, does it truly exist at all?
Some would say yes, of course it does.
After all, the universe existed for billions of years before life arose... didn’t it?
But look closer.
Does the universe exist first, allowing life to form?
Or does the universe exist because life came into being and began to experience it?
There are so many questions we have about the universe that don’t quite add up.
The deeper we dig, the more we realize how much we don't know, and maybe can’t know.
But to me, life and the universe are inextricably linked.
We exist, we experience the universe, and in doing so, the universe exists too.
Maybe life isn’t an accident of the universe.
Maybe the universe is a construct of life.
The Ships No One Could See
To push this idea even further, there’s a famous story, part history, part myth, about the Native Americans and the first European explorers.
When Columbus' ships approached the shoreline, it’s said the indigenous people couldn’t "see" them at first.
Not because they were blind.
But because they had no mental framework for something so alien.
Their minds quite literally filtered out what they didn’t know how to process.
It wasn’t until a shaman stood at the edge of the water, staring patiently at the horizon, noticing strange ripples, disturbances, patterns he couldn’t explain, that the ships slowly came into focus.
Once he saw them, he taught others how to see them too.
But until that moment, the ships might as well have been invisible.
Their presence, their sounds, even their shadows, they weren’t there to the minds that couldn’t yet comprehend them.
Reality was right in front of them.
But without the perception to grasp it, it may as well not have existed at all.
Maybe the universe is the same way.
Maybe we only perceive what we are able to perceive.
Maybe there are layers of reality, entire worlds, entire truths, hidden in plain sight, waiting for us to develop the awareness to finally see them.
And until we do...
they might as well not exist.
The Double-Slit Experiment: When Observation Creates Reality
Quantum physics gives us an even weirder glimpse into these ideas — that the universe and life may be far more intertwined than we’ve ever believed.
In the famous double-slit experiment, scientists fired tiny particles, like electrons, at a barrier with two narrow slits, aiming to see how they would behave.
When no one observed the particles directly, they didn’t behave like tiny balls.
They acted like waves, spreading out, interfering with themselves, creating patterns as if they traveled through both slits at once.
They existed as possibilities, not certainties.
But when scientists set up a device to observe which slit each particle went through, everything changed.
The particles "chose" a path.
They stopped acting like waves of probability and behaved like distinct, measurable objects.
Observation didn’t just record reality.
It changed it.
The simple act of watching forced the particles to pick a definite state, to collapse into "reality."
Sound familiar?
If a tree falls with no one to hear it... does it make a sound?
If a ship sails into view but no mind can comprehend it... does it exist?
If a universe is born but no life arises to witness it... is it truly there?
Maybe, on the deepest level, the universe isn’t a machine grinding away, cold and indifferent to us.
Maybe it’s more like a stage, waiting for someone to step into the spotlight.
Maybe reality isn’t something that simply is.
Maybe it’s something we are co-creating, every moment we open our eyes, take a breath, and live.
Maybe the universe needs us just as much as we need it.
So... What Is the Meaning of Life?
Maybe the meaning of life isn’t written in the stars.
Maybe it’s not hidden in ancient books or locked away in secret knowledge.
Maybe it’s far simpler, and far more profound.
To be alive.
To exist.
To experience.
Because without life, without consciousness, none of this, the trees, the ships, the stars, the universe itself, would exist at all.
Maybe life isn't something the universe creates.
Maybe the universe is something life creates.
And if that’s true...
then simply living, simply being, is the most important thing you could ever do.
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