What will happen the day we get to know the meaning of life?

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If there’s one things humans are always going to do it’s redefine the meaning of words. People think the “meaning of life” is the ultimate question, but it’s really just one of semantics. What does it mean to live? We all have an instinctual answer to that question.

My own answer to the question has many layers. At the bottom is the mathematical entropy layer, essentially, life is how matter fights against entropy. Barriers against chaos provide for a tiny garden amongst the chaos. A solar system has a huge gravity well which, over time, stabilizes the planetary neighborhood. The planet itself has a number of barriers, the magnetosphere and atmosphere are probably the most important. Life is the diversity that blossoms whenever chaos can’t threaten to wipe it all away.

There are many intermediate layers which would take an entire book to flesh out, but at the very top is our own struggle to find our own relevance. In between there’s the journey from self-delusion to enlightenment, for some that is their own struggle for relevance.

At the very tip of the spear is the present moment, what are you doing right now and why, once you’ve cleared away the incidental and temporal. This is probably what most people think of when they hear the term “meaning of life,” the hopeful union of the temporal and eternal. For what you’re doing right now to provide answers to all the questions you’ve ever had or wondered about.

And so this question is interesting from that perspective, it posits an eventual moment in time in which all persons have discovered this blissful union. And then wonder what will happen next. But that’s the answer right? Once you’ve united the temporal and eternal, then what’s next is just as amazing and fulfilling as the moment of union. It never stops being amazing and wonderful, because all the questions that have ever been posed, about what to do with boredom, ugliness, and laziness, have been answered in the most fulfilling way possible.

Once these questions are answered, there is but one thing left to do, to glorify the wonders discovered. To share with the next generation that can still have the joy of discovering them. To wipe the slate clean and do it all over again, better this time.

To endlessly remix and refresh and relive the essential splendors of being alive.