The Meaning of Life

I don't watch much television these days, but when I do...

I sound like one of those 'The Most Interesting Man in the World" commercials, don't I? Sorry.

To continue... but when I do, I watch things like Stephen Hawking's Grand Design, which tonight focused on The Meaning of Life -- dah dah dum (insert ominous music here). He spent most of the hour talking about how everyone perceives reality differently, but in the end he concluded that the meaning of life was found in your mind.

I examined this question, as I'm sure all of us have, many times in my life and here is my conclusion. There is no Meaning of Life, in the grand plan of creation meaning of the term. To me, the meaning of life is an internal, personal thing.

What is the meaning of your life? And that, to me, is a two-fold question. The meaning of one's life consists of what are you passionate about and what do you do. And I don't mean your hobbies or your job.

In my life, the two things are interwoven. I am passionate about my love for my family and that makes part of the meaning (or purpose) of my life to raise children into thoughtful, responsible, intelligent adults. It also entails helping my husband fulfill his life's dreams, even if that means learning to Bondo a 1970 Chevelle SS and knowing how positraction affects a turning radius. (I can and I do.)

I have always believed the Native American saying, "We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children." So I am a passionate, tree-hugging environmentalist from way back. I practice and advocate solar energy, wind power, and recycling. I used cloth diapers on all three of my children; this was in the late eighties and early nineties.

I believe in taking care of those who cannot take care of themselves, so I donate time and money to causes that help those less fortunate than myself. I am also one of the very few people happy to pay their taxes, as those taxes are providing necessary help to those who need it (at the moment, this may change after the next election).

I am so passionate about animals that my husband has made me promise never again to walk into a pet store or an animal shelter. I cannot stand to see animals in cages. When a neighbor abandoned two dogs, guess who took them in? I am passionate about child protection laws and decent healthcare for everyone. I am a member of the Human Rights Campaign and the ACLU. I could go on, but I think you get the idea.

All of these things make the meaning of my life. And that's all that matters really. What does your life mean? Whose life are you changing for the better and what did you do today to make your house, your community or your world a better place? That, my friends, is the meaning of life.

Memory, or the Lack Thereof

And I'm not talking about my hard drive this time. You haven't heard from me for a few days because I am bipolar and with this condition comes occasional insomnia. You don't want to read anything I've written after not sleeping for four days, trust me on this.

But today, on the eight hour drive home from Dallas (we made a couple of stops) I had two ideas for blog posts that I liked, one of which I remember thinking was excellent. The problem is, I can't remember what either of those ideas were. I can remember thinking they were good, but not the ideas themselves. Do you want the kicker? I have a small pad and pen in my purse for just such an occasion. I also write fiction and so I always keep something nearby to write on so that if inspiration should strike, I will be able to write it down. But this time I forgot to remember to write it down.

So I want to get a tattoo that says Write it down but I don't know where one would put such a tattoo so that it would be both inconspicuous and yet somewhere I would see it so that I would remember not to forget.

It's a quandary. I'll think about it for a while.

If I don't forget.

Wasn't This Supposed To Be Fun?

My siblings and I did not play a lot of games when we were growing up. Not because we didn't have any; my parents, like many parents of the 1970s, felt it was their Christian duty to buy us the newest games every Christmas, whether we wanted them or not. But playing games, in my childhood home, was never fun. And isn't that what games are supposed to be? Or so the commercials tell us. Fun for the whole family! Hours of delightful fun for your children!

No. Because in our house, my mother - for whatever reason - felt the need to sit next to us as we were playing a game and tell us what we were doing wrong. Not that we were breaking the rules, but we weren't making the move that she would have made. Whether it was Monopoly or solitaire, it didn't matter. She could never sit idly by and watch us play or, even better, go in another room and read a book or something. She had to not only watch at close quarters, but play the game for us.

Believe me, any fun to be had disappears very quickly and you stop playing games all together.

Some people have said this is a control issue; that some people feel the need to control their environment. I can understand controlling your environment to a certain extent - it brings calm to your world if there are no surprises. But when you need to control it to the point where you're telling the people around you how to play solitaire, you need counseling. Which my mother would never have considered. "Normal" people didn't go in for psychiatry back in the 1970's. And, while my mother wasn't normal - in ways I cannot even begin to go into here - she liked to think she was and living in a suburban neighborhood would have meant that the neighbors would talk and we couldn't have that, now could we?

My mother's peccadilloes no longer effect me; she died in 2003. But the reason I bring it up is because almost every night before I go to sleep, I play a game on my computer called Bejeweled Twist.  It's not in the least bit difficult, there is no way to play it wrong - and the game never even ends. It saves after every move, you stop whenever you want to and you just play on and on forever and ever. I think my score is in the 75 millions right now. It is relaxing and somewhat mind-numbing so that you can forget all the crap that happened during the day (or will happen tomorrow) and let yourself drift into a peaceful world where you can sleep. Side note: my body is not fond of sleep. It rebels against it in horrible ways and so I go to great lengths, almost every night, to get myself to a state where I can sleep.

Back to the point. I cannot play this game if my husband is around. Because... you guessed it. He will tell me what moves I should make or should have made. Let me repeat - THERE IS NO WAY TO PLAY THIS GAME WRONG. You don't die. You don't lose a turn. You don't have to start over. You are not penalized in any way if you don't make a match. So why oh why does he feel the need to do this?

My husband is not a control freak. (Except during construction or car mechanics, but since he's the only one who understands these things, we want him to tell us what to do anyway.) But the rest of the time, there is not a controlling bone in his body. And he knows about my mother and knows how I felt about her telling us how to play games. But he forgets when he's sitting next to me and he sees a move he thinks I should make. Because something inside of him just needs that move to be made.

I think there should be a law against this kind of behaviour, but I can't think of a punishment strong enough. Do any of you have any ideas?