STOP TRYING TO GIVE LIFE A MEANING

It happens again and again, an endless loop. The most long, planned, and exhaustive task nature gives us. Life. One might think it's trivial, but what life does not give us is a reason or meaning. That's why, we had to create one for ourselves. But something so complex is seen from different perspectives, some call it "happiness", others call it "religion", "knowledge, "legacy" and a plethora more, but as I write I wonder, why did we have to give it meaning? To feel useful? To have a motivation? Indeed, we are not strong enough to think otherwise, to see life at it's, just chance.

This means, we had to rely on abstract concepts. Because after all, all we believe in was invented by someone time ago, just metaphors that give life meaning. The soul is not your mind or inner self, it was just how an old Greek man called our intelligence. And yet, we believe what that man called Socrates said, and it intensifies if there is a reward. If you follow the concepts religion teaches you, if you behave as the holy books states it, there is a heaven waiting for you. That makes people meaningful, it gives them focus and ideas to fight for instead of living for nothing. For example, why do religious fundamentalists reject natural selection? Because souls don't evolve, it means it's likely you don't have one and if there is no soul, there is no heaven that will receive it after we are dead. And of course, if they are to choose between paradise (even though it may be a lie) or nothing, they choose paradise. We all do.

So, why aren't we able to accept all this may be a lie? Why can't we live without meaning, we must be strong enough to remain human and just live. While "meaning" is seen as something basic in human nature (something that has achieved great achievements), to other people, not having one may create depression and solitude. If we taught people life is meant to just live it, we would have avoided the problem previously stated and we would continue to build the advanced societies there are nowadays.

In addition, it seems we were not satisfied with the greatest miracle, being alive, no, we wanted more, we wanted fight and to strive. That's why other people live for being materialist, pretending happiness was something you can measure with how much money you have. This causes a problem as well, because human nature has taught us that humans are rarely satisfied with that they already have. We think our goal is to be successful, we feel pressured to show progress, to produce more, to know more, to buy more. The issue comes when you understand that yesterday's luxuries become today's necessities. Once you get all you wanted, that "want" state will shift into a "need". If for some reason you are to lose that, you will feel stressed to get your comforts again. This is worst when you are given all those "needs", that's why kids should not receive everything free from their parents. So, when will we feel satisfied? If we think life is about having more and more, when will you have the time to really spend and enjoy all you have, without wasting it all or being stressed because you must study or work? Our system answers that, when you are old. At least, that the answer for most of the cases. For example, here in Colombia you must work until you are 62 (Male) or 57 (female) to get a pension, until you are old, with your energy drained.

Next, you have the people who live for knowledge, as the author Yuval Noah writes: "The greatest scientific discovery was the discovery of ignorance, once humans realized how little they knew about the world, they suddenly had a very good reason to seek new knowledge". The best examples of this are science and philosophy, we have that instinct to know more and more, it seems life's purpose was to understand life. Probably the best purpose is this one, you have something to work in, a purpose and the reward of getting a real answer, the best end for a difficult quest. However, it seems that we don't use that knowledge sometimes, take global warming, we know it's a fact and that it will eventually destroy the humankind, and yet, we don't do enough to stop it.

But now, if you think about it, all that drives our life, why we really fight more, are feelings. We like religion for its passion, we don't stop global warming because stopping it would mean less growth, we like knowledge because it makes us feel powerful and interesting, in synthesis, for feeling positive sensations. Because deep in ourselves, we know we are not the principal characters in an Oscar movie winner, we know our love story was not the one of Romeo and Julieta, we know, nobody cares. What we care about, is just feeling good, all we believe and fight for is to satisfy ourselves. Noah says: "the humanist motto is 'if it feels good – do it'". And that's true, even though we know something is bad, we might still do it. Our real authority are feelings, we do as they say.

Besides, what if I told you, our feelings and actions are just impulses, are just signals our brain sends us because it was coded that way, feelings and desires are just neurotransmissions and responses of our instincts, what is written in our genome may define us, for example, how much dopamine you produce. And, how we behave and our skills is not a matter of soul, it can be altered with science, changing the signals I had previously written about. The best way to show you this is with the Sally Adee sniper experiment. She went to a military base to test her shooting skills in a simulator. She didn't hit a target in the simulator. After that, she used a helmet that stimulated her brain to "improve" her skills, and indeed, she repeated the simulation and "felt like Clint Eastwood", she hit all the targets. Sally says it was almost a spiritual experience.

Another example of this, maybe more frightening (from a certain point of view) are the studies of the Professor Roger Wolcott Sperry (Nobel prize in medicine and physiology) and his student Professor Michael S. Gazzaniga. They wanted to demonstrate how the hemispheres in our brain act so differently. They asked a boy what he wanted to be when older, the left hemisphere (in charge of speech) said he wanted to be draughtsman, while the right hemisphere, wrote with the help of scrabble tiles (as this hemisphere is not enough to answer vocally) 'automobile race'. Strange, two different answer from the same person. The same was done with a WW2 veteran, his hands were controlled by a different hemisphere, in the experiment they isolated each hemisphere from each other, while one wanted to open a door, the other hand intervened to slam the door.

To sum up, what I want to transmit is to make you understand that sometimes, what we feel and want is not exactly your fault sometimes, just natural responses of our organism, I invite you to stop pressuring yourself to find meaning or purpose, you don't have to live according to a book (not only religious ones), you don't have to be the richest or wisest person on earth, just live your life and the rest will eventually appear as you do so, you just have to carry on. Because as you now know, even our brain has different courses of action, two sides fighting to be expressed. Never feel depressed if don't find quick answers, because it's likely (and this is not to be taken in a pessimist perspective), somethings don't really have one. Specially if you wonder the meaning of life.