My friend Jack is...

The other day, my partner and I were in the car, the radio playing the very catchy BoneyM tune from the 80’s. Having grown up in the disco era, we did what most of us would do – make up our own lyrics to the tune based on what we thought we heard in the song. While I heard something like “My Friend Jack is Shwedagon”, my partner obviously heard something completely different. Her’s was …” My friend Jack is chivalrous!”.That made some sense, considering that Jack is after all a man and Chivalry is a quality desired in men,by most women, and even some men.

 

Before we move on, click here to listen to this catchy tune and make up your own lyric...

So what lyrics did you make up for it? If you heard Shwedagon or Chivalrous obviously you have been nudged by this article. My lyric of Shwedagon makes no sense at all,considering that Jack cannot be the golden Stupa in Burma. Clearly that was quite absurd. I am sure most of you heard it as “Chivalrous” considering it is meaningful, especially with the follow up lyrics. But then, that’s the problem – a problem unique to us humans. 

We assign meaning to what we sense. Things may appear to be meaningful because we are nudged by what’s surrounding the subject in question or even our own biases. Now, this was ok, because it was just a song, we were having fun as we drove around, and we were not going to fret over it. But the more news and social media I consume, it seems that people are declaring war on simple, stupid and meaningless things without understanding what primed them to see it the way they see it in the first place. If we draw a big insight from Existentialism, it’s the idea that everything in this world is inherently devoid of meaning. It becomes meaningful only because we assign meaning to it. Then we should keep all of it to our own selves. I think the time is ripe to start the “Meaningless Movement”

By the way,the lyric in the song is actually ..”My friend Jack eats sugar loaves” - scary, considering everything we know about diabetes and such.

Have a light and stimulating 2015!

The Meaning of Life

It’s what we dread the most, having to ever stop and think about the meaning of life. This question has bothered everyone,be they sinners or saints, politicians or philosophers. So, have I found the answer? I am sure everyone would be very skeptical about it, but then you have every right to be. So, here’s my answer..I found the meaning of life to be absolutely meaningless. But then I realized the profound nature of this meaninglessness, it being tied to one of the most important things we pursue in life; freedom. So, to put it directly, in plain and simple language, it’s the meaninglessness of life that gives us the freedom to pursue what we want. Imagine for a moment that there was some meaning to life. Then we will have no choice but to follow this meaning and our lives would be imprisoned, locked inside this meaning, unable to deviate from it.

I would assume that if there was a common meaning to life, there would be a far greater number of depressed, unhappy people jumping off balconies because of their inability to engineer their own lives. So the absence of a meaning is the ultimate blessing in disguise, because now we can assign meaning to our own lives in whichever way we want and follow that from the very core of our beings. So, here’s to the meaninglessness of life!