In the poetic, thought-provoking words of Rene Descartes, "I think, therefore I am." Sounds like something the average Joe would say to sound philisophical, but what does it mean? Well, Descartes had this idea that for all we know, we could all be a system of minds, all controlled by some super-being. The things we see and feel and hear are no more than electrical signals implemented on the brain by this being (such as in The Matrix). Seeing as how our senses are no proof that we exist, as they may simply be tricks of the mind, how do we know that we exist? Well, the fact that we are able to think is the only true proof that we exist. Though philisophical, the fact that we exist is unimportant. The real question is "Why do we exist?"

There have been many theories and ideas as to why we exist, many illogical, many good ideas, many my own. For instance, when I was younger and believed in God as I was told, I thought the reason we were here was to do what God put us here to do, whatever that may be. Later, I began thinking that we are here to work. If you think about it, we start preschool learning basic skills of speech and counting and getting along with others, so that we are prepared for schooling, which is entirely based around our future career. Then we either work forever thereafter or work until we are too old to "live". And if you try to "live" as a teen (as we are "supposed" to do, yet it is illegal to), you are "screwing up your future". So our entire lives, we are either working or learning how to work. Then I started thinking that it was our job to keep the world going. That's why we're here: the upkeepers of the universe. But the world--the entire universe--will eventually end someday. After realizing this, I understood that there is no meaning to our existance, at least none that anyone knows about.

As depressing as it may sound, it seems to me, at this point in my life, that there is no reason to live. Anything you can think of, any reason you can come up with, can be countered by the fact that the world will end someday...that the entire universe will cease to exist. What's the point of changing the world and maintaining it if it's going to end anyway? Everything has a particular life span that it cannot exceed, and the universe is no exception. Why work if you are going to eventually die? Why live if you are going to die anyway (which is pretty much restating our initial question-at-hand)? There's no reason to...

For as long as we shall live, the mystery of life will remain just that: a mystery. The fact of the matter is, the meaning of life is so far out of our grasp that we couldn't even comprehend it as unenlightened living beings. Nobody knows what death is like, as none of us has ever exprerienced it. Of course, if you are religious, your search for the meaning of life has been simplified, but still, there is mystery (that's another story for another time). I'm not saying there is absolutely no meaning to life, just that there is no meaning comprehendable to us, the living. Nothing in existance can explain our existance. Only in death will we know the meaning to our life...