The Meaning of Life

     You realize, there is no time now for anything but truth. And this is it: death is simply a natural part of a natural process. People are, and have always been, a part of nature, just as tigers and termites are.

     Priests and preachers refuse to accept this sensible view of things, choosing instead to nourish our collective neuroses: "Eternal life!" they proclaim-- and so, by promising glory in a grand but unreal eternity, they disparage the satisfaction of our small but valuable moment.

     Imagine yourself religious. You picture God planning all things reasonably and wisely. Our bodies, we are told, are temples,so we treat them with respect and look forward to our threescore and ten years.

     But God, it turns out, is not only unreasonable, but also a vandal. After years of taking care of our tidy little temples, God abruptly breaks down the door, smashes the window, rips the paintings,and slashes the furniture. All of a sudden, without any warning at all, God shrieks in our ear: Cancer!

     Now imagine yourself not religious. Cancer slips up without warning, threatening death. You do not fear death, But you hate it: you hate the loss, and the sorrow of leaving behind bereaved family and friends. What you feel is the proper rage at being mortal: you know you've been dealt a bad hand. Ants and alligators must also die, but they do not confront that fact with rage or regret. Those feelings are human.

     Religion says, Console yourself, there will be another chance, another life. Two things are wrong with this. First, there is not a shred of evidence for it. And second, it is intended to blunt our rage and regret, thus dehumanizing us. Our anger at death testifies to the value of life; our sorrow for family and friends testifies to our devotion. Every noble quality we possess depends for its poignant value on our natural brevity. Our final pain is mortal, and our own. We refuse to have it cheapened by the seductions of an alleged immortality.

     Doomed to extinction, our loves, our works, our friendships, our tastes are all painfully precious. We look about us on the streets and discover that we are beautiful because we are mortal, priceless because we are so rare in the universe and so fleeting. Whatever we are, whatever we make of ourselves, that is all we will ever have. And that is the meaning of life.