To begin to answer this admittedly inconceivable question, I decide to look to my past first. I wanted to see what I already knew and how that knowledge eventually catapulted me into the psychiatric ICU years later. As a 17-year-old junior at an all-male school in Kentucky, I will say that it is pretty weird for me to be thinking about all of this mortality stuff. I should be living my life and making friends, but instead I’m having my existential crisis way too early. I have been an introspective and sensitive person ever since I was little which has always put a huge target on my back for bullies. I began to question my existence and life itself way back in the 5th grade. I found what I considered to be the absolute answer to the meaning of life when I was about 10 years old. And, until recently, I held on to the preconception for the entirety of my adolescence.

Where did I find such an amazing solution to life’s most difficult question at such a young age? It came in the form of the poorly-rated, 2014 Disney reboot sitcom, Girl Meets World. More specifically, the third episode of season two, “Girl Meets the Secret of Life”. I decided to rewatch the episode because I hadn't seen it in 8 years, and it was pretty cringey watching the young cast balance corny jokes with exceedingly deep topics. But watching overly-deep shows like that formed me into the introspective, creative person I am today, so…both a good and bad thing, I guess? The show’s titular middle school teacher, Cory Matthews, acknowledges throughout the episode that there are many meanings to life, but that life is truly shaped by the people that care about you. Our meaning isn't our past or our future. It is to listen and learn from the people that love you in the present. When asked by his students if he had found the meaning of life, Cory answers, "People spend their whole lives trying to figure it out. I was lucky. I had a teacher who cared about me to make sure I knew" (“Girl Meets the Secret of Life”). Basically, what I got from the episode as a young kid was that if you have people in your life that truly care enough about you to change you, then there is a good chance that you are living a meaningful life. He boils it down even more later in the episode to create the apothegm that I had carried in my pocket as my go-to answer to life for many years. He scrawls those three-words that I will never forget onto the classroom chalkboard at the end of the episode: “People change people” (“Girl Meets the Secret of Life”).

 The people around me have always impacted my life and the way I view myself and the world around me. This dependence on others to validate my happiness only grew more in middle school. I was confronted with the drawbacks to my previous definition of the meaning of life as I began to realize that people could change me for the worse. My satisfaction with my life was waning and I wanted to find new meaning, or at least more guidance than my three-word adage. I was an avid bookworm when I was younger, so it was obvious that I was on the #BookTok side of TikTok when I downloaded the app in middle school. I saw someone talk about a new book called They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera and how life-changing it was. So I got a group of my friends to read it with me and, to this day, it is still one of my favorite books I have ever read. The young adult novel follows two boys spending their last day together after finding out they have less than 24 hours to live by an omniscient online service. For a book about two people dying, Adam Silvera really spends the majority of the time highlighting the reasons we live. Whenever I get really lonely, I feel especially meaningless, and I think this book covers why. The desire to make an impact on the world is one that many people have because they worry they will be forgotten when they die. But as Silvera says in the book, "affection from millions and intimacy from that one special person are completely different beasts" (Silvera). I constantly write in my journal this singular phrase: "I don't want to be everything to everyone. I just want to be something to someone." Maybe that is the reason we live. To love someone. To have someone else truly validate our existence.

Mateo and Rufus spend their last hours in each other's arms, not out trying to change the world. People look to secure a longer life past the one they live by attempting to leave their mark on others, but one never truly lives when all they worry about is dying: "I’ve spent years living safely to secure a longer life, and look where that’s gotten me. I’m at the finish line, but I never ran the race" (Silvera). The fear of being forgotten makes the act of living instead of just existing hard. That is why we want to love someone who makes us feel immortal. Mateo and Rufus gave each other life right before they both died and that allowed them to pass happily. Notes Mateo, “I kiss the guy who brought me to life on the day we’re going to die” (Silvera).

Although the relationships with the people around me have been vital to my purpose and happiness, my relationship with God and religion itself has always been an important part of my life as well. As I began discovering new explanations for my existence around this time, I, in turn, began questioning the existence of the Catholic God I was always taught to be my meaning. I was raised in a Catholic household and have attended Catholic school since preschool. Until middle school, I accepted what I was taught by the priests, teachers, and nuns in my life as the true reason that I existed. The whole point of my being was to live according to the Catholic teachings so that I would have eternal life and happiness in Heaven just as the Bible had taught me: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness” (The Holy Bible, 2 Timothy 4:7-8). I wish I was still able to believe in God like I did before. If I did, writing this paper would be a million times easier. A Catholic's life is spent in anticipation of an eternal life. Non-religious people like me question our existence because we fear death, but Catholics don't. Their whole existence is based on an unwavering belief that there will be no end. God is both the beginning and the end as shown in the very first sentence of the Bible, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth" (The Holy Bible, Genesis 1:1). God is their meaning. They live their life fearing Him and only do good in order to prevent being doomed to eternal suffering.

Even though I disagree with a lot of what the Catholic Church has to say about the meaning of life, there are still some Bible verses that hold a lot of veracity on how to live a meaningful life. One specific verse that I found a lot of truth in was Matthew 6:25 when Jesus tells his disciples on his iconic Sermon on the Mount, "Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?" (The Holy Bible). Jesus is right on the nose about how it is vital to be grateful for our life and how truly priceless it is. There is so much more to our lives than the materialistic aspects such as food and clothing. We were granted the ability to think, to laugh, and, most importantly, to love. Isn’t that truly amazing? I mean, just the fact that we are alive and able to live such earnest lives is enough of a reason to continue to live. Even though I am not religious, it is obvious how much of a miracle it is that I am alive, healthy, and given the intellect to contemplate these existential ideas with lucidity and I think that it is important to be appreciative of that.

As I grew up into an increasingly independent teenager, I began to accept my rejection of religion until I was introduced to a new spiritual path in my sophomore year. My girlfriend at the time was Sri Lankan and she and her family were practicing Buddhists. As I began suffering newfound trauma in my life and dealing with growing existential anxiety, my girlfriend’s dad recommended that I read Siddhartha by Herman Hesse to learn about the Buddhist perspective on life. The book basically details the journey of a young man named Siddhartha, who sets out on a journey to seek enlightenment. He tries many different lifestyles and gets advice from many different teachers, but in the end, he eventually finds his enlightenment through living a simple life as a ferryman. 

Siddhartha heavily stresses this idea that there is a difference between seeking and finding. Hesse comes to the conclusion that we can only truly live by "being free, being open, and having no goal.” This reminded me of reading They Both Die at the End because both books cover how we spend our lives running from death. Finding meaning in life and seeking meaning in life are two very different things. We seek meaning before death because most people (including me) have a brooding insecurity that we will not live a meaningful enough life to impact anyone else. But we can find meaning in life by letting go of these insecurities and simply embracing the love of other people, as well as our love for ourselves. Siddhartha spends the majority of the book looking to others to find validation for his existence but ends up chasing something that isn't really there: "I was afraid of myself, I was fleeing from myself. [...] But in doing so, I was losing myself” (Hesse). By embracing ourselves and celebrating the fact that we are alive and can find meaning, we can actually live. "Your soul is the whole world” (Hesse).

I was super inspired after reading Siddhartha and I felt all scholarly so, in an attempt to impress my girlfriend’s family, I decided to dig deeper into the principles of Buddhism. But, as I researched more and more into Buddhist ideals, I began to connect with it in ways I had never before with Catholicism. The certain branch of Buddhism that struck me was Theravada, which teaches that we can obtain fulfillment in our lives through our own efforts. I began looking at some of the religious texts used by Theravada Buddhists and identified their principle text as being the Tipiṭaka. It was difficult to find English translations of the ancient text, but one verse that really struck me at the time was, “Do not dwell in the past; do not dream of the future; concentrate the mind on the present moment” (Tipiṭaka). By living in the present and not dwelling on how much life we have lived and how much time we have left, we can live purposefully and make every second count. Perhaps the fact that I am writing this essay and worrying about all of this stuff proves that I am not living my life to the fullest. But hopefully, I can try to start living without letting the shadow of the future loom over me. 

Once I find the meaning of life, of course.

Over the past couple of months, I have tried to block a lot of my existential crises out of my mind because I have been busy dealing with other forms of tribulation in the midst of my busy high school schedule. But today, as I was engaging in my hour of social media brain rot, a random video from a meme page called @sigmawealthco reinvigorated my curiosity about my existence. The user took a clip from an episode of a Ricky Gervais comedy called After Life and pasted onto a TikTok above a clip of a car flying down a ramp in GTA V. I had never heard of this show, but I continued watching anyways to see the animated car fly down the colored ramp. What I didn't expect was to also uncover a brand new approach to the meaning of life.

In the clip, Ricky Gervais’ character is asked how it is possible for him to find meaning in life when he doesn’t believe in God or the afterlife. My Catholic peers ask me the same thing as well. According to Space.com, the observable universe is at least 92 billion light-years in diameter and ever-expanding so, in a scientific manner, we are essentially meaningless. As a non-religious person myself, I constantly find myself asking why more people don't kill themselves if our lives are so minuscule in the grand scheme of things. But this TikTok gave me a different perspective on my question by comparing life to a movie: “If you're watching a movie, and you're really enjoying it, and someone points out that this'll end eventually, do you just go, ‘Oh, forget it then. What's the point?’ and just turn it off? No. Well, I think life is precious 'cause you can't watch it again. [...] One day you'll eat your last meal, smell your last flower, hug your friend for the very last time. You might not know it's the last time, so that's why you should do everything you love with passion, you know? Treasure the few years you've got because...that's all there is” (@sigmawealthco).

 The beauty of life is that it ends. Gervais tells us that that is why we should love with passion and do good in our time here on earth. Knowing that one day you will hug someone for the last time creates a sense of urgency in our lives to appreciate those who love us. This urgency is our meaning. It creates a motivation to be good and love others because we are constantly running out of time.

Thinking about this urgency has got me thinking about how an important and necessary aspect of finding meaning is death itself. Trying not to think about death as the antagonist to our life is pretty difficult but, if you think about it, it would be horrible to be invincible. Take the aptly-named show Invincible that I have been rewatching for the gazillionth time as an example. Spoilers to the season one ending but, honestly, if you haven’t seen it yet, what are you doing with your life? The invincible anti-hero of the series, Omni-Man, wants to take over Earth for his home planet and his son Mark (who is invincible too but also half-human) is trying to stop him from succeeding. 

Omni-Man ends up gorily beating the crap out of his son in the last episode for trying to protect his human friends on Earth, and in a last ditch effort for Mark to join the evil side before he murders him (invincible people can kill invincible people in the show), Omni-Man screams, “Think, Mark! You'll outlast every fragile, insignificant being on this planet. You'll live to see this world crumble to dust and blow away! Everyone and everything you know will be gone! What will you have after 500 years?” And Mark is barely conscious enough to utter, “You, Dad. I’d still have you” (“Where I Really Come From”). The meaning of our life isn’t defined by our existence, but by the people around us. Life would lose its meaning if we were invincible like Omni-Man. We do good and seek out meaningful paths in an attempt to meet like-minded people whom we can share the remainder of our temporary lives with. Without death, there can be no life. I think that it is kind of poignant in a strange way that we are headed down the same path to demise. Whether we accept our collective fate and try to live life to the fullest or choose to fear death to the point of stagnancy is up to us.

Now, between seeing this video and discovering the disheartening quote that I mentioned in the beginning of this paper, my existential thoughts have once again begun to take root in my mind and grow over all of my other thoughts like an intrusive weed. I have been working with my therapist, Brooke Richart, on learning to not let my thoughts spiral and grow out-of-control. When I think about it, this paper is one huge spiral…well…anyways, I wanted to talk to her about what she thought the meaning was because maybe getting my answers from a clinical counselor would give me more peace of mind than a minute-long TikTok. 

I walk into Brooke’s cozy office, grab my usual Squishmallow that I squeeze when I am talking about anxiety-inducing stuff like this, and start the conversation quite bluntly:

“What do you think the meaning of life is?” 

She is taken aback but answers the impossible question anyways.

“I think the meaning of it is your search for what makes meaning in your life, like the journey, is the meaning. A belief that I have is something called a growth mindset. It's proven with brain scans and research what a difference it makes to have that mindset of feeling like everything is always in process. There's always ways to get better. That is the meaning. I mean, if I didn't believe that people could get better and change then this would not be the right job for me, right?”

As my therapist and an overall optimistic person, I expected Brooke to give a positive answer like this, so I push further by asking her if she has ever felt meaningless in her own life.

She gives me a very honest answer.

“I had a very good friend from college die very tragically right after our college graduation and then a year later another friend died, and they were like freak accidents, like, literally, my friend was hit by a fallen tree branch when hiking, and my other friend got like this crazy strain of pneumonia. And then there was a period in 2016 where I had a friend die because she was hit by lightning. It was hard to make sense of all of that and make sense of what I wanted to do differently in order to make an impact before I die.”

“Do you ever feel like you aren’t making enough of an impact to be remembered? Do you worry that you would be forgotten if you were to pass away in a freak accident like your friends’?”

“I guess I don't have that worry because I know that the people that I impacted will remember me, and then maybe that will fade, but that's okay. I don't need like fame or recognition or to be a historical figure. If you try to consider every person, every problem, and everything that's out there, it becomes paralyzing. Certainly being aware of all of it is important to me, but I find if you are so overwhelmed by everything, you are paralyzed often. So it makes it more manageable, to say, ‘This is my small community, and this is who I'm going to impact.’ Then you can start to feel it and you can start to see it. And I just assume that if I have a positive impact, then they will have a positive impact with the people around them. It's a ripple effect. Rather than being like, ‘I have to fix the whole world,’ I can be present for this person in front of me and I can try to help them make their lives better.”

Dang. That is an amazing answer. Rather than stressing about fixing the world, I can be present for the people around me and create a positive ripple effect around my community. This mindset is reminiscent of what Cory Matthews said: people change people. If I am constantly worrying about the universe and the meaning of it all, then I will miss out on the life that is occurring right in front of me. I don’t want to let my life pass me by anymore so I ask,

“What can I do right now to help me live my life to the fullest and aid in my journey of finding my purpose?”

“I don't give advice because it's not my job to be like, "This is what I think you should do with your life." It's to help you, to ask you the questions, to have you consider all the things so that you decide what it is you want to do in any given situation. But I think the fact that you are asking these questions makes you awesome. I think just knowing that there are so many people out there like you who ask these questions and, even if the world feels small now, that there's a huge world out there. So keep searching for those people. Keep searching for it in books and movies and your art because it is all out there.”

I walk out of Pediatric Associates with an unpaid insurance balance and a new ardor to continue on my journey. If I keep searching, I will eventually find new people, places, and things that will help me discover my true purpose. I just have to get out of my small bubble of Catholic rurality to do that. 

Therapy works, y’all.

It has been a little over a week since I last wrote for this paper and everything has changed. I knew there would be obstacles I had to face in order to find the answer I have been longing for, but I never expected something as harrowing as this. My lifelong neighbor, Lawson Murdock, just killed himself at the age of 21. I struggle to write this because I haven’t fully processed it and still am in a state of shock over a week later. Lawson was more than my neighbor. He was family. Sometimes he was more of the older brother I needed when my actual brothers were  He would make me smile anytime I was left out by our other neighbors. I remember how Lawson told his mom how upset he was when he saw the constant abuse I had undergone from my older brother. He was the only person I have ever known who truly cared and showed such kindness to everyone. 

Lawson was the one who took me to the hospital last year when I had my suicide attempt.

He was there for me when I was about to take my own life.

And now he is gone.

I have dealt with my fair share of death in my life with the loss of several family members to overdose and illness, but I have never experienced something so devastating. Lawson had always loved country music and was one of the only people who could get me to listen to it when I was younger. He wrote many country songs and two days before he shot himself, he wrote his final one titled “When I Go.” The whole song is about how thankful he was to have such an amazing childhood with my neighbors and I. The flower-covered sign going into our neighborhood served as a barrier between us and the cruel, lonely real world. Our days were spent swimming in his backyard, playing frisbee golf, exploring in the woods, and just being together all of the time in the summer months. Although Lawson had cerebral palsy, we never once viewed him as different. When the summers turned into fall and everyone finally left for college, he had to experience so much loneliness and hate from the outside world that we couldn’t protect him from. Lawson sang, “When I see paradise with my own pair of eyes, I hope it looks a whole lot like my backyard did back when I was a kid” (Murdock). He never wanted to grow up. None of us did, but it happened right before our eyes. But Lawson made sure to reassure all of us that we gave him paradise on earth already and that it was his time to go: “When I go, I don’t want no tears. Brothers, reminisce about yesteryears. I may not be there anymore but please be sure that I have seen paradise” (Murdock).

It now feels that all of the meaning of my past research has just gone in the trash. I feel so hopeless and more unsure than ever what the real reason we are here for is. For example, looking back at the clip I found on TikTok where Ricky Gervais compared life to a movie feels incorrect now because Lawson turned the movie off. He had such little hope that he would ever truly be happy because of his disability that he decided to cut it short. Also, my whole point about how death isn’t the antagonist in our lives feels like such crap now because this past week has shown how completely world-shattering it can be. I discussed earlier how life would have no meaning if everything stayed the same forever, but I would give anything right now to go back to making clay sculptures in the creek with Lawson and my other neighbors in an eternal summer.

But no matter how dreadfully hopeless I have become throughout this past week, there is still something holding me back from ending it all as well. I’ll never forget what Lawson’s dad said to me on the night it all happened. He told me how he will never be happy again and will never understand why Lawson ruined the rest of so many lives by ending his own. Every single day since last Wednesday, I have been surrounded by family and neighbors who are all enduring the same pain that I am. We are all in inconsolable pain and the only thing we have right now is each other. Maybe living life until the end is for the good of others and not necessarily for yourself or your purpose. Right now, I want to stay alive for the sake of my family, neighbors, and anyone else who would be chronically hurt by my passing. Some people say that suicide is a selfish act, but I think it is better put to say that staying alive is a selfless act. I say this because I remember how I just wanted to make everyone’s lives easier by getting rid of my own last year. The idea of being selfish and knowing that you will hurt people didn’t even cross my mind when I was in a suicide-driven mindset, so I do not believe it is right to call suicide victims selfish. I don’t have meaning in my life right now but I do have an incentive to keep going for the sake of others. According to Albert Camus, this shows that in fact do have meaning because I have something that is preventing me from killing myself. But I feel so horribly meaningless anyways. Camus didn’t have a Lawson in his life to change his perspective on everything, so I don’t want to hear him yap right now.

I have been going on a lot of car rides by myself recently to just think about everything (and cry loudly) without anyone hearing me. I have been listening solely to country music because I literally cannot think of anyone else except Lawson whenever I am alone. Well, today, I was driving through the curving back roads of nearby farmlands around dusk time to take my mind off of things when a certain song started playing off of my shuffled country playlist. It was none other than one of my favorite songs of all time, “Live Like You Were Dying” by Tim McGraw. If you haven’t heard the song before, it’s basically about this man who finds out he has a life-ending illness and, rather than letting it weigh him down, he does all the things he always wanted to do and was able to be a better husband, lover, and friend than he had ever been before. Then he finds out he isn't going to die because of the illness, but still vows to live every single day like he was dying. 

With everything that has been going on, I have been thinking a lot about the life I am living and how it can end in an instant whether I want it to or not. If I were to die right now, would I be content with the life I lived? I know that’s a weird thing for a 17-year-old to be asking, but I think it's a valid question. One of my main reasons for writing this paper was to figure out how I can live a meaningful life. McGraw’s song gives an interesting perspective on how to truly live: without regrets. He is basically embodying the YOLO mentality, popularized by Drake in 2011, throughout the entirety of the song. He does so in obvious ways such as going “skydiving” and “Rocky Mountain climbing”, but he also begins trying to “love deeper” and appreciating the people in his life (McGraw). 

I have always been one to believe in the “You Only Live Once” lifestyle, but I was sort of turned off of the idea back in freshman year when I told my religious math teacher, Mr. Lubbers, that I was a YOLO guy and he said it was selfish to live like that because God says to fear death and look forward to the next life. Him saying that made me ponder on how society perceives the concept of living like you are dying. It is more than just taking risks and doing dangerous activities. It is about appreciating what you have every single day and not wasting a second of life fearing death. McGraw sings, "I gave forgiveness I'd been denying” which is a huge aspect of living like you are dying. Holding grudges is just a waste of life's finite hours. I am certainly not very good at living YOLO because I hold grudges and I don't appreciate a lot of things in my life, but it was my New Year's Resolution this year to be more grateful. I believe that gratitude, not in the creator of life or whatever, but in the present day and all the gifts it brings here on Earth, is how to truly live like you are dying. When we are grateful, it is a lot easier to see the meaning of it all and how we can truly embrace our existence on this planet. I am grateful for my car to allow me an escape to get away from everything and just take a breather. I am grateful for my support system and the fact that I get to live in such a beautiful, tight-knit community. I am especially grateful that I do not have to go through horrible tragedies like these alone and I believe that fact alone demonstrates that I have plenty of meaning in my life.

Returning to school the week after Lawson committed suicide has been insanely difficult for me. I am super behind on all of my work and literally cannot focus on anything. I find myself on the verge of tears during most of my classes and the hundreds of condolences I get from both my peers and teachers do not make it any easier because I am trying so hard to distract myself enough to get through the school day. Even though I am now trying to be grateful for the people in my life, I still 100% feel that my existence specifically is meaningless. More than ever, in fact. After reading Siddhartha, I understand that I cannot find meaning and purpose through other people and that I need to find it from within. But God, do I wish I was dead right now. I hate myself and I hate that I am alive and that Lawson isn’t. I feel like I don’t deserve to be here right now. I feel like nothing.

The suicidal thoughts have been flooding my mind all day today and I feel so guilty for feeling like this. I feel like I am a bother to everyone in my life and that I don’t bring any positive impact into the world, but I know the ruinous effects that I would put on my family and friends if I went through with it. Feeling guilty just makes me hate myself more and it is one anxiety-inducing, dizzying cycle. I need to talk to someone about this or I might explode, so I go to see Mr. Haders during my lunch period. Mr. Haders is my art teacher, but I have opened up to him more than I have with anyone else in my life. I do so because I relate to that old, bald man more than anyone else in my life. We both come from broken homes and have both encountered many adversities in our lives. We are both also vulnerable and sensitive people, so I really feel like he gets me more than my own family and friends. He made it through in the end and he is one of the only people in my life that genuinely, like actually, cares about whether or not I do too. Seeing the incredible impact he has had on thousands of students despite his horribly-dealt hand makes me want to keep living in hopes of leading a life anywhere near as influential as his.  I knew I could go to him for advice about this whole situation because he has helped me with so many other crises within the past couple of years.

I enter the brightly-lit art classroom during my lunch period and, before saying anything, I instantly blurt out,

“What is the meaning of life?”

Without missing a beat, Mr. Haders replies with his signature corny sense of humor.

“Apples.”

He then turns around and sees my eyes welled up with tears and instantly turns serious. He is really good at that.

“Breathe. Because you're all right. You are. You're okay.”

“I am just freaking out right now. The unknown is so terrifying.”

“That's why you're asking me these questions. The whole reason is that you’re terrified. You wouldn't ask someone if your life has meaning if you felt you had meaning, right? Would you?”

I go on to explain that recently the only meaning in my life has rooted from other people. He knows that I am a people pleaser and that I view myself through the lenses of other people.

“I've known lots and lots of students who wanna be validated by other people, which is fine. We all want that. We all wanna be loved. We all want to be appreciated by others. But you have to validate yourself, because you're gonna meet a lot of people who aren't validated. They're not secure. And so what are they gonna do? They're gonna wanna tear you down, to bring you down, to feel insecure and unimportant, like they feel about themselves. You gotta realize that your life can make a difference. Then there's purpose. And it doesn't make any difference what other people think about it.”

“So you think that the meaning of life is to change other people’s lives?”

“Well, you gotta figure that out. That's what I figured to be my purpose. Even for you to try to gain understanding of your life, it's gonna be really hard, because you know that much perspective, you really think about it. I mean, it's, it's only, it's only within the last couple years that you've been able to move from the concrete stage to thinking abstractly. So how do you know when you've only had a couple years of practice?”

“Did you find that your meaning changed throughout your life?”

Absolutely. Um, you know, at first, I thought the purpose of my life was to be a good husband, because I loved my wife dearly. Then I had a child, and I thought my purpose of life was to be a good father. And then I got to teach, and I thought my purpose in life was to be a good husband, a good father, and a good teacher. As my life went on, I realized that my purpose was just to love and serve others.”

Mr. Haders has always been one of the most loving people I have ever known. His wife passed away last year and I cannot imagine how hard it was to lose the love of his life. I have recently been feeling especially meaningless after losing Lawson, so I asked him if losing his wife made him feel meaningless as well.

“I met my wife when I was 15, we dated, we broke up, we got back together. We were friends, and then I started to love her. When we got married, I made my vows to love and to serve her till death. We had two kids and then she suffered a massive stroke that almost killed her and, and I had many people, including her mom, that said to me, "I'll understand that this is too much, and you need to leave her." But that was the furthest thing from my mind. The only thing that I could think about was how can I care for her and love her more? You know, the week that I brought her home before she died, the purpose of my life was completely envisioned. It happened. I got to love her to the very end. It was the culmination of – Don't get sad, it makes it hard on me. – It was a culmination of 40-something years of saying I love you. I've never shared this with anyone–”

“–You don't have to share anything.” 

At this point, there are tears streaming down both of our faces. He continues talking with a shaky voice.

“No, it's okay. I knew that she was gonna die on Saturday night and so for most of that night, I talked to her and, I'm not much of a singer, but I played songs and I sang with her. And there was no acknowledgement, but I think she knew. I wanted to do whatever I could to just remind her that I loved her. I fell asleep, and then I woke back up at about 4 AM, and saw that she passed.”

We are both silent for a while. I don’t know what to say. After a while, Mr. Haders wipes away his tears and addresses me directly.

“I just hope that you're patient. I hope that you realize what a gift you are, and realize that your gift may not be monumental, but somewhere someone needs Dillon Cain. Somewhere someone's life will be better because of your existence. And it may not even be someone that you're intimate with, you know? And that's the thing. You take a rock and you throw it in the water. It ripples out and we see the ripple at the beginning, but as it goes out, the ripples are barely noticeable. But it's always there. That ripple flows and touches other things. And our lives are like that. Our lives are purposeful, and they're meaningful. We may not even see it, but just the fact that we take a space, it changes all of existence. You will. You will see it. It's just right now. For now, you just gotta learn to breathe. You gotta learn to love yourself.”

When someone has asked me what I am writing this paper about, I have told them that it is about the meaning of life. But honestly, that isn’t the truth. In the end, it has been about me. It always has been. Talking with Mr. Haders made me realize that thinking about the meaning of life from a philosophical, aloof stance doesn’t accomplish anything (Mr. Haders calls philosophers “bullcrap artists”) and that it isn’t until you are willing to be vulnerable and connect the ideas you learn to the personal pains, joys, and fears of your life that you will actually learn something. The majority of my classmates have been trolling me throughout the writing process of this paper because what is a mentally unstable teenager going to know about the meaning of life. But now I realize that the answer was never really the point of this paper.

All of the insecurities and pain in my life have caused me to question why I am here. This trauma combined with my anxiety has allowed for the perfect storm of existential thoughts and fears to swirl around my head and take over. I convinced myself that finding a definite answer would help to calm the storm and I think that has made me a bit close-minded. The reality is that there is absolutely no definitive answer to the meaning of life. I’m sorry if you have gotten this far just to hear me say there is no answer, but it’s just the truth. After my perspective-changing discussion with Mr. Haders, I stopped asking “What’s the meaning of life?” and I am starting to ask “What are the meanings in life?” Once you let go of the premonition that there is a definite answer, you can open so many doors and opportunities for growth. Just as Brooke mentioned with the growth mindset, we are constantly changing. So why can’t our meaning change as well?

I read a blog written by bestselling author Scott Berkun today that explains this idea pretty well. I know that blogs are gross, but this was from 2013 so I’ll give him a break. He explains that “it’s clear there are an infinite number of meanings to life. You can have several of them that serve you in different ways, or that are useful at different times. The meanings of life for a 17-year-old boy is different than for a 27-year-old woman, and on it goes. We go through many meanings during life and people who have fulfilling lives take ownership of the process of shedding old meanings and cultivating new ones'' (Berkun).

The journey of writing this paper and doing research for it has not helped me find a clear-cut answer, but it has certainly given me a lot to work on. I could say that this process has healed me of my existential crisis and that I am now able to love myself, but that would just be a blatant lie. But I can at least start trying now. I am going to try to embrace those in my life who support and love me. I am going to try to welcome adversity into my life as a means to growth. I am going to try to stop obsessing over the bigger picture and start focusing on the impact I can make on my community and the people around me. I am going to try to stop thinking about Lawson being taken from the world and instead focus on the crazy amount of love and joy that he brought into the world. I am going to try, try, try to learn to love myself (or at least like myself, I’ll take anything at this point) and understand that I do have an impact on others. But, most importantly, I am going to try to start learning to breathe. I have so much life ahead of me and I don’t want to harp on these thoughts for the rest of my life. I don’t want to fear death but instead embrace life. 

I have failed to find the meaning of life, according to French artist Albert Camus. But I am finally content with the fact that I have the rest of my life ahead of me to figure it out.