The Answer to the Un-Answerable Question

What is the meaning of life? How do you measure a life’s value? These questions seem so daunting, perhaps because we human beings have been trying to answer them since the beginning of our existence. If it took great minds like Ovid and Descartes years to answer these questions, how can we expect to come up with responses in a few days?
After getting over the initial intimidation of answering a seemingly answer-less question, I began my search for the truth. I’ve found that defining life’s meaning and measuring its value is quite personal; it is a matter of opinion and individual feeling. There is no all-mighty, magical answer that pertains to every person that has walked the earth. Essentially, we create our own meanings for life, and we determine the value of life based on our personal definition. Some religious people consider life a prelude to the afterlife; for them, a life of value is one spent striving to follow religious teachings. Others measure a life’s value in dollar signs; they might consider economical success the meaning of life. If we think of the world as the home of billions presently and of trillions past, it becomes a pretty impersonal place; at the end of our lives there is no earthly judge who determines one’s worth. We must personally consider the value of our lives based on what we feel life should mean, and how fervently we stuck to our values.
In order to feel like my life is fulfilled, there are a few things I must experience before my death (knock on wood.) First, I want to have a family. I am really blessed to have been born into a loving, deep-rooted family; I grew up with a blend of cultural values and religious morals that have increasingly guided me as I’ve gotten older. I want teach my children the same ethics my parents taught me. I want to pass on my beliefs, create legacy, a nurture someone else. I want to experience motherhood, the joys and trials of marriage, and the love of my own children. Families themselves are what have sustained humanity throughout the ages. They are the way human beings reproduce; they sustain nations, and cultures. Perhaps if I do as good a job raising my children, they’ll hope to start their own families as well.
Secondly, I hope that by the end of my life I have a greater understanding of other people. I am just one of the 6 billion human beings co-inhabiting the earth. This means that 5 million nine-hundred ninety nine thousand other people are experiencing the world differently than me. I want to travel the world and live amidst other cultures. I want to understand how other people live; I want to eat their food, listen to their music, and find out what they are proud of. Essentially, I want to find out what other parts of the world have to offer that I’m missing out on. I suppose curiosity of other cultures is what has shaped humanity and allowed it to take over the earth. In pre-historic times, groups of hominids’ interaction with other groups of hominids spawned tribes and nations. Cultural diffusion has made humanity stronger.
Along the lines of understanding and experiencing other cultures, I want to master another language. I don’t simply mean knowing another language conversationally, or taking a few courses of it in college. I want to become flawlessly fluent. From the limited amount of Greek I speak, I realize that communicating solely in another language forces one to think differently. Words from two different languages can translate the same, but feel different. Difference in languages is one of the biggest separations between countries and cultures. Perhaps there would be less conflict among human beings if everyone were able to communicate smoothly, and if everyone were willing to think like another culture thinks.
I am thankful for the amount of Greek I know, because I use it to communicate with my yiayia. She loves to recount stories of her childhood, stories of her parents’ childhoods, and even more distant stories that her parents told her. Someday, I want to write down all our family stories (or at least the ones my grandparents share at every family gathering.) My Greek ancestors lived through multiple Occupations, and struggled to make my life possible. They risked their lives to preserve our culture and our religion; thus, I feel obligated to honor them by preserving their memories. I think part of what makes human cultures so beautiful is that they are all full of stories from the past. I would love to add to the history of mankind, even if it is only a miniscule part.
Finally, I hope that by the end of my days I have learned to simplify my life. We make life so much more confusing and stressful with the amount of “stuff” we fill it with. We Americans have houses full of items we rarely use; our material possession become a main focus in our lives, and they distract us from matters such as family, and the fulfillment of our lives. If everyone would turn his attention towards his/her values and goals in life, perhaps the world would become a more peaceful place.

On a Quite Depressing Subject

It seems that humanity is obsessed with permanence, perhaps because everything, including life itself, is temporary. Shelley demonstrates the temporality of man’s creations in “Ozymandius,” where he describes the decrepit remains of King Ozymandius’ “great works” half-buried in a wasteland. Walls will crumble, empires will fall, and artwork will disintegrate. There is, however, one exception to this notion of impermanence: death. Death is our only guarantee; it allows no exceptions, cannot be bought off, and does not supply trial runs. It is mysterious and frightening because death is a permanent change that we are blindly thrust into.
Death even frightens Gilgamesh, the incomparable Sumerian demigod; after his lover, Enkidu, dies, Gilgamesh becomes aware of his own mortality and fears his impending death. While in mourning for Enkidu he cries: “Despair is in my heart. What my brother is now, that shall I be when I am dead. Because I am afraid of death I will... find Utnapishtim...” (97). Thus, Gilgamesh resolves to seek out his immortal father, Utnapishtim, in search of eternal life. However, at the end of the quest, Utnapishtem simply tells Gilgamesh, “There is no permanence” (106). Gilgamesh must accept that one cannot be immortal because nothing lasts forever. Physical destruction is inevitable for everyone and everything on earth.
One may ask how we go about our daily business with our doom looming in the back of our minds. However, there is no one answer to this question because everyone copes differently with the knowledge of death. When we are young we generally cannot fathom our demise because death does not seem real; some people spend their whole lives ignoring the thought of death so they don’t have to confront fear. Others find comfort in religion. One of the most luring aspects of a faith is its proposition of an afterlife; death seems so much less daunting if we know what awaits us. Most of us simply choose to make our lives satisfying, regardless of their fleetingness; some people have a family, and others accumulate wealth. What brings meaning to our lives is the impressions we leave on earth after we die. We as individual people may not be remembered, but attitudes we have, the morals we pass on to others, the ideas we express through art and occupation can last; they become timeless, everlasting, and as close to permanent as humans can achieve.

Thinking about the Hero

One day in kindergarten my teacher told the class to draw a picture of a hero. I started drawing the Pink Power Ranger however, Mrs. Walsh sternly advised me to reconsider my subject. “A hero,” she told me, “doesn’t have to be pretend or super” and she insisted I pick a “real-life” person, like a firefighter. I went home that day with a rolled-up drawing of a fireman; I knew that my teacher designated him an acceptable hero, but I didn’t understand why. In the world of a five year old girl, selflessness and courage are just words, but fighting “bad guys” in a pink costume is heroic.
Those we consider heroes possess the qualities we most admire. Thus, some revere Batman as much as others do Martin Luther King Jr. However, this abstract concept of heroism makes defining a hero difficult; oftentimes, we end up with a variety of clichés instead of a solid classification. We commonly hear the assertion that heroes “do what’s right” and “never give up,” but we rarely hear what the right thing to do is, and what they are not giving up from. If we refer back to the story of Robinhood we’ll remember that he is hailed for stealing. Despite the multitude of traits people seek in heroes, and the many definitions of “right” and “wrong” a few aspects of heroism seem to stretch across both time and universe. Heroes always fight for a noble cause, they endure sort of hardship, and they never do deeds looking for heroic recognition. Even though stealing is universally accepted as immoral, we consider Robinhood a hero. How can we make such a contradiction? Robinhood steels from the greedy villains because he seeks justice, not personal gain; therefore he is an acceptable hero.
Because humankind generally agrees on these aspects of heroism, a common string of characteristics weaves through our heroes. Courage, conviction, morality, altruism, and physical and/or mental strength, we may find, repeat themselves in newspaper stories, classic literature, and mythology. If all people are striving to be the best human beings possible, it is clear what qualities society deems important to attain.
Many of the well-known heroes we emulate happen to be men; however, this occurrence is not because more male heroes exist than female. As unfortunate as it may be, men have dominated societies for countless time periods. As a reflection of this dominance, the male heroes commonly outshine their female counterparts in stories both modern and ancient.
Essentially, heroes represent human passion for life. Our creation and/or perpetuation of these stories of extraordinary deeds reflects our inherint desire to keep the human spirit alive. I disagree with Bertold Brecht’s notion that only communities in turmoil need heroes. Heroes, whether existing in myth or in reality, serve as symbols of virtue and moral strength; their stories inspire even when there are no cities to save or criminals to punish. Hopefully one day there will be no need for heroes to save the world from moral decay and self-destruction; however, it will probably take a hero to get us to that point, and his/her name will undoubtedly be remembered through the arts like so many others.