You are at your grandparents’ place, spending time with your cousins and there is not a care in the world. Your most major concern is that you have homework due the next day. Yet, you keep on playing and time feels stuck in place.
The next thing you know, you are having a mid-life crisis. Besides stressing over everyday responsibilities: doing laundry, cleaning the dishes, and preparing yourself mentally for work the next day — the daily routine, you feel stuck again, nothing is changing and life slips through your fingers. Is it because you do not have anything to strive for? Or is it because life has no meaning? Or does life feel meaningless because there is nothing to strive for?
We have so many things to make meaning of: religion, love, family, friendship. Yet, something still feels missing. How do you find the missing piece of the puzzle? So many life-critical questions arose in a few sentences and still no answers.
Do you resolve to religion to obtain pre-made solutions? Or to love for temporary forgetfulness of the problem? Family and friendship are taken for granted, anyway, so you will not find meaning there.
I answered this question for myself by trying to let go of my ego and help others in any way I can. Maybe I can instill an emotion that sparks an internal, positive change in another human. Perhaps, that reflects back on me and ends up helping me, too.
One can only try.