The Meaning of Life!

'What is the meaning of life?'
or 'Is there any purpose to it?'

Such a boring and hackneyed question yet such an important one!
Life!
My Life!!
The 65 years of time (considering the average life time of an ordinary Indian) I breath and respond in someway on this planet.
A single life form among 7 billion such life forms of homo-sapiens species which walks around on this planet with an ability to respond to things.

Is a mere 65 years of life is all that you have? Does it matter??

It feels greatly humble to look at the journey of 2,00,000 years of our species since it's origin  - let alone the 3.5 billion years journey of the life since it's origin  - and our minuscule life time of a mere 65 years!

You ask me the meaning of life when I think of the gigantic spaciousness of the universe and the immense depths of the 14 billion years old time - my life is, frankly, less than negligible. 

But interestingly - when I think at this level and the feel the very humbleness of a life that I possess/represent - it doesn't make me feel less important. Rather it makes me feel awe! Awe at the stupendous scale of the things around me.

It makes me only wonder - how great the things are around us!?

Coming back to the purpose of my life - first question to be asked is - Is what I call my life is truly or entirely mine? Do others lives have no impact on my life?

Am I an island of a being without any connection to other beings of my species or in a broader perspective - without any connection to the other life forms in general?

Answer to this is so obvious!

Absolutely No.

As my favorite Telugu poet and lyricist Sirivennela says in a song - 'We are all the waves of the ocean called humanity. Each wave is different in it's own way but is part of the ocean'
And here the ocean is not even the single species we named homo-sapiens. The ocean is the 'life form' that is so rare (and so precious) in the known universe.

(How much of my today's life is influenced by my forefathers?

Millions and millions of lives have an impact on each other causing me to do what I am doing right now - thinking about the purpose of life and writing it down in my laptop.
Electricity - Internet - Computer Technology - English Language and grammar - Evolution theory ........... each one is the result of a life time work or some life-times work. And each of those lives were again influenced by other lives - stretching right back into the origin of life!)

Yes - today's human being has a direct connection extending till the very first life form fledgling on the planet earth some 3.5 billion years ago. 

Wow!!

We are the manifestation of the universe extending back to 3.5 billion years of life chain which tries to understand itself!

We have evolved in these 3500 million years - faced strict odds, ate each other (still doing! :) ), fought deadly wars among ourselves, faced the wrath of the elements - the chill of the ice ages, the ferocity of the volcanoes, and the blasting of the neutron stars in distant galaxies, got extincted many times ..... and in each step evolved slowly to adapt better to the circumstances around us.

In this process - after a period of 3.5 billion years - we reached the current form of life - homo-sapiens. Lucky enough - this monkey form has become the dominant life-form on the only planet in the known universe to be containing life. And as a leader of the whole range of life-forms, we have have a responsibility to protect not only our own species but also the very life form (single celled or multi-celled) on this planet or elsewhere in the universe. Not just protect life form but we have a much larger goal/purpose to make an impact on the universal scale.

Think about it - first time in our history of 14 billion years of universe - a life form - a manifestation of the universe itself - can determine to travel from the planet of it's origin with its own willingness and can try to understand itself!

To push the humanity further - a small step - however small it might be - in an attempt to contribute to the advancement and protection of this precious form of the universe we name - life - and to treat myself as a manifestation of a great, continuous chain of life extending back to 3.5 billion year old - this could be the meaning of life!