Does the meaning of life depend on the person?


If you think that the meaning of life depends on the person, you probably imagine an interest or something you live for.

In his Symposium, Plato argues that all humans are born for one purpose only: to search for eternal happiness.

Told that humanity shares the universal purpose of finding lasting happiness, some may protest that each individual has a unique purpose in life.
This assumption is natural,
Since individuality and diversity are among our core values;
each person shines out, we believe, precisely because he or she is unlike anyone else.
The sorts of goals people usually have in mind are things like getting accepted into college, mastering a foreign language, winning an athletic tournament, having a successful romantic relationship, getting a steady job, building a house, getting rich, winning a Nobel Prize.
But these are in fact mere way stations in life, goals that are only relevant for the time being and that bear no resemblance to a true life purpose.
If you satisfy these goals, will you be truly happy? Of cause not.
When you get a job, you must start working.
Then, how much work must you accomplish in order to become satisfied?
If you have achieved great results, you may be temporary satisfied, however, that satisfaction is not one in which you are able to feel that you will have no regret when you die.
Then let us hear from great historical figures.
Isaac Newton, a man who has left several scientific achievements, said,
Meaning of life Newton
(wikipedia)		 "I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me."
Yet Charles Darwin, who devoted his life to developing the theory of evolution, gained no happiness from his historic achievement.
He lamented having become
Meaning of life Darwin
(wikipedia)		 "a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts."

Meaning of life John
(wikipedia)
John Lennon from the Beatles also says,
The Beatles earned enough money than they wanted and gained much fame but realized that there is nothing.


Alfie Kohn, a U.S. researcher noted for his studies on the ill effects of competition, has discovered that even after attaining a major goal, many athletes are deeply scarred by a sense of futility and disillusionment. He concludes,
Meaning of life Kohn
(wikipedia)		 "Winning fails to satisfy us in any significant way, and thus cannot begin to compensate for the pain of losing."

Fiction writer Haruki Murakami, whose work has been translated into about forty languages, is adamant that he has not gained any release or relief through writing books:
Meaning of life Murakami
(wikipedia)		 "I do not write and publish sketches like this to make myself feel better .... At least so far, I see no sign that writing has been at all liberating to my spirit .... People write because they can't help themselves. The act of writing is of no use in itself, and provides no attendant salvation."

Guy de Maupassant, the French writer highly praised by Tolstoy, wrote:
Meaningf of life Maupassant
(wikipedia)		 "Do not envy the writer, but rather pity him."

Even an unparalleled optimist like Goethe lamented,
Meaning of life Goethe
(wikipedia)		 "The course of my existence... at bottom... has been nothing but pain and burden, and I can affirm that during the whole of my 75 years, I have not had four weeks of genuine well-being."

Japanese ukiyoe painter Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) lamented, looking back over his career,
Meaning of life ukiyoe
(wikipedia)		 "If Heaven had my granted me five more years, I could have become a real painter."


The great Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) suffered in his declining years from crippling arthritis. Even so, he continued doggedly to paint by holding the brush in his twisted fingers and wrapping it in place with a long bandage. In a letter to a friend dated 1919, he expressed the frustration of not being able to use his talent:
Meaning of life renoir
(wikipedia)		 "Now that I can no longer count on my arms and legs, I would like to paint large canvases. I dream only of Veronese, of his Marriage at Cana. What misery!"

The same thing can be seen in the world of business. In his book Meaning in Life: The Creation of Value, MIT professor of philosophy Irving Singer observes that for many people, work that is going well can suddenly seem stupid and pointless:

"People who devote themselves to a worthy but stultifying career toward which their upbringing has steered them may suddenly feel that everything they do is meaningless."
It is generally believed that people have a differing meaning of life. People begin their lives this way, however, successful people with this idea end up with similar regrets in life. Even the great Einstein left the same regrets as Katsushika Hokusai.
Meaning of life Einstein
(wikipedia)		 "I want to live three years more, I could achieve the unified field thory for another three years..."

Don't you think that the statements are all similar? Not only the end of life but also the many events in your life are not coincidental to you but others are experiencing similar events. You are merely oblivious of others' lives. If you think that the meaning of life depends on the person, then your life will not be one with particular characteristics and the same as other people's lives. As a proof, you are probably thinking "the meaning of life is varying and I am going to do what I want to do." Since, even the great men who have accomplished so much are discontent with their lives, do you think that you are able to be satisfied with your life? You are going to fall into the same pattern as these people without knowing of it.
Sakyamuni Buddha said,
"As life ends, regret and fear occur by turns."
(Larger Sutra of Infinite Life)
These words surely sum up the frame of mind of the pilot as his plane crashes into the sea.
Just as for an airplane there is no worse fate than a crash, so in life there is no event of greater consequence than death, the "crucial matter of the afterlife." We have squandered our days. We have sought the wrong objectives. Talent, property, and power have earned us the respect of others without affording us either joy or satisfaction. Why have we not rather sought happiness to satisfy the soul? We are left with nothing but sighs of regret. So wrote Seneca, a Roman philosopher who lived in the first century. This lament can only be the regret of someone taken aback by the blackness of his prospects after death.
The resolution of this mind is taught in Buddhism.
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