What is the meaning life? I mean that question is so broad of a topic that if I wrote a million pages it still would not cover it. Estimated on this earth there is 7,369,837,679 people. There are estimated 2,883 births today and 1,207 deaths at 12 o’clock in the morning. That is the cycle of life we live and we die. Everyday somebody is born and someday dies. It is a fact whether we prepare ourselves for it or not. To be honest nobody really realizes it till somebody closes to them dies.

I was watching a movie called The Fifth Quarter, it a great but sad and eye opening movie. Nobody really prepares for death. In media today, it is common thing to live it up. When I was in middle school there was a popular saying YOLO. It stands for you only live once. It used to be one of those over said clique remarks. But my favorite comeback for that saying was this, you live everyday but you only die once.  How true is that?

I mean as a teenager I am the queen of wasting time. I would rather sit in my room and do nothing than hang out with my family or do something worthwhile. If I were to die today I imagine a lot of people would say I died too young and that I had the potential to do something great. I had the potential. How sad is that?My whole seventeen years would be summed up in one word “potential”.  I mean God has given me every chance to touch other people's lives and to make an impact.  Yet I had chosen to sit back and watch from the sidelines.

Death is the ultimate end to human life. There is not any coming back, that is a scary thought. To have wasted your life on something you thought was true just to find out what you placed your life and trust in failed you. What did I live for? Who did I live for? Society today does not have an ounce of respect for human life. Between suicide, murder, and abortion the value of life has decreased tremendously. A well known star  that commonly speaks his mind said “The point of life is getting s&*! done and being happy.”

My question is where is does happiness come from? I mean if our society is happy why do we keep trying all these new trends to fill us up. The tenth leading cause in death for adults is suicide and it is the third leading cause of death for teenagers. I admit that I have taken my life for granted many times whether it was by complaining about a first world problem or just having respect for my body.

I wonder sometimes if we all saw our life in a flash, would it cause a spark of change in us? We were made for a purpose. In Exodus 9: 16 God says “But I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I might show you my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth”.  Everybody has a reason to live. It  makes me happy to think that I am not just sleepwalking through life.

If it is not evident by now to you guys, you can probably guess that I am deep thinker. At first I had my own ideas to what life was. I was always disappointed in what I thought life was because I was looking in other places instead of Jesus. Curiously, I looked up on google what other people thought life was. I came across a website called Meaning of Life Perspectives from the World’s Great Intellectual Traditions. This website had lectures on zen, buddhism, and the universal human goal of happiness. All of their ideas and theories were great but were all impossible without a greater driving force.

Their religions and ideas were based on man searching for a higher power or greater life. My experience differed because my God searched for me. Not only did He search for me but He gave a part of himself to die for me. “There is no greater love than for a man to lay down his life for his friend.” Other religions require much of you but promise little. All God asks of me is to fall in love with him and the rest will follow. Without the eternal love we are all left where we started. Addicted and bound by the things of this world.

It is hard to believe but people are not born moral human beings. You have to teach a child to have morals. Yet, you do not have to teach a child to be selfish or disobedient. As I said there has to be a greater driving force. My driving force is God and His love that He sent through His Son on the cross. Yet even that does not stop me from being at odds with my beliefs. Before long I found myself in the seat of hypocrisy. I was thriving on the outside but rotting away on the inside. My meaning of life was a fraudulent because I did not truly understand what I called my meaning of life.

My mouth spoke one thing but my actions proved another. I began to realize after a while of living like this that I did not want to live. If this was all life was about than I was ready to check out. I abandoned what I once believed in and began living how I wanted to live. I made up my own rules and rationalized in my mind every sinful deed I was doing. I had ruined every good aspect of my life. To this day I still struggle with the backlash and the regret of all my decisions during that time in my life. I made a mess that I could not clean up and it all  started with not having respect for my life. 

I started seeking affirmation in my life from others. I am speaking generally when I write this my generation mostly seeks affirmation through social media. We measure our worth in how many “likes” we get on a picture or how many facebook friends we have. For most teenagers their meaning of life is in social media. They follow it like the disciples followed Jesus, wholeheartedly. I am guilty of the pulls of technology; for so long I found my worth in technology.  One of my favorite quotes on this topic is “we are living for likes but longing for love”. We base our meaning of life a man made invention instead of the creator who made man. We start seeking the creation instead of the creator. 

The real question at the end of this what is your meaning of life? That is all that is going to matter to you in the end. You will have to defend that meaning and fully trust in that meaning no matter what. That belief  will be the sole object to get you through this life into an eternal life. Be ready. Death is near for all of us. Some sooner others later. Pick your meaning because the fascinating thought it that you have the choice. No one making you pick one way or the other. You have free will use it wisely. Never take time for granted. The main point is life owes you nothing. What you do in your life matters and how you live you life matters.