The Meaning of life --

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Date Posted: 20:46:39 12/06/07 Thu
Author: vit
Subject: The Meaning of life

No mortal human being could ever disclaim, whether we strive for an ambitious goal or a modest aim, it is only a matter of fact when will be the time to face the inevitable vanity. Although it sounds like a nihilist, but indeed, can any kind of “ism” ever nourish in favor of such finale in a more acceptable scenario for the multitude?

Life is egotistic, so as the meaning of life. If there really has any meaning, there also must has reason.

Perhaps it is time to take a serious look at Mr. Bertrand Russell’s writing, one of my beloved and respected philosophers, when he raises a replaceable question: What I have lived for?

“Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a great ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.”

Longing for love, to the understanding of all longing adults, needs the mercy of one’s fate. It means practically one has to tempt fate to get there.

Lord Byron once wrote this poem:

“This time this heart should hath unmoved,
Since the other it hath ceased to move,
Though I cannot be beloved,
Still let me love!”

The ecstasy of love is so great, it’s no wonder that Mr. Russell asserted “that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy.”

The matter between to love and beloved sometimes seems quite different, but for love itself is in fact no different at all, one has to fathom as Byron lamented.

I give myself up for a soliloquy about love, but I am bold to let anyone know, the searching for knowledge is what I am lived for, although the more I learn, the more I feel as Mr. Russell mentioned :

“That terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss.”

For many a night, as I read through Kant’s theory, I keep on wondering would it be better to take a walk under starry moon night, before a priori knowledge drowns me with lots of metaphysics. And while 莊子
comes into my mind:

吾生也有涯，而知也無涯。以有涯隨無涯，殆已！

I almost close my book, if there not remains one critical question: what do I know?

Really, what do I know?

According to this retrospection, the searching for knowledge thus gains back its momentum; it is also literally the reason why I can sit still for a tender night writing in vain for what I have lived for!

For the last outstanding passion, before I may conclude it with my bare hand, may I respond until further discussion with Mr. Godfrey Pang, and of course, with all dear you, if that’s the matter you would like to share, as Godfrey shares his with mine.

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