Meaning of Life in Love

What is the meaning of life? People think about this question every so often. This question may come to one's mind when he or she is in deep thought, suffers from depression, becomes bored, or finds that life is repetitive (which in this case he or she may either become bored or useless). The reason for this is that people are actually clueless in the true meaning of their lives which leaves them empty inside. This engages people to think and ponder on the question stated above. Viktor Frankl and Maurice Riseling further explained this thought. The former stated that there is an inner emptiness in us all which makes people feel lost and thus, "no instinct tells him what to do, and no tradition tells him what he ought to do; soon he will not know what he wants to do." The latter then adds that "sooner or later, life makes philosophers of us all." Still, no matter how people think, the question still remains. Therefore, in order to be able to address this, we must first answer these three questions: What do we mean by meaning? Is life meaningful? If yes, what then gives our lives meaning?

What is it that we mean by the word "meaning" when we ask the question of "What is the meaning of life"? Does it mean that we are looking for a purpose? If this is so, then we don't really have a distinct meaning in our lives. This is because of the reason that our purpose changes every time. One person may be a student right now, and then be a lawyer in the future, thus having his purpose in life changed. If this isn't so then perhaps what we mean by meaning is that we give a definition to our lives. After all, it was stated a while ago that people has an inner emptiness and therefore, it would make sense to say that by giving definition to our life can we fill this emptiness inside. We can now say that there is actually a meaning in life and it is possible to attain it by giving definition or meaning to it. Still, in this vast world we live in, there are various things that we can give ourselves definition or meaning to. The problem now is in choosing of what will bring meaning to our lives and as a result, we may end up confused not knowing what to choose. Is it still then possible to give meaning to our lives? To this I would answer yes. People actually have a hard time choosing because they are pressured to conform to the ways of society. We want to do our own thing, but the pressure keeps us from doing so. Mary Rogers, an expert on Goffman's conformity, stated that social order leads to pressure for us to avoid negative reputation in the society. This is a bad thing since people have freedom and should therefore exercise this right. Even the French Philosopher Jean Paul Sartre tells us "You are free, therefore choose." Once we are able to choose our own set of definitions (e.g. careers, hobbies, attitude, virtues, etc.), we can give meaning into our lives. But then, one may think that once we are able to attain this, life may get boring and repetitive since the things we do will be fixed. Would life still then be meaningful if this is the case? To this I would answer yes since again, we people have freedom therefore we can choose to live our life differently each day. Albert Camus would also agree on this as he said that life is indeed repetitive but it is up to us humans to make a variety or make something out of it. And also as Aristotle stated it, "life is not an endless series of lacks and strivings to satisfy lacks. Life offers resting points of fulfillment, moments of pure happiness when we experience our lives as complete and lacking in nothing, and all desire and concern are stilled. " One may then ask how we are supposed to do this. In order to answer this, it is of importance to address the question of what is it that gives meaning to our lives which, in some way, works to make it worthwhile? The answer is simple. We incorporate love into our lives. This is because love, among other things that gives meaning to our lives, encourages us to live on and removes this notion of repetitiveness in our lives. In this case, I am not saying that love is the only thing that gives meaning to one's life but rather love is only one of the factors of this with love being the most influential and fulfilling, thus my argument. In order to support this claim, I will explain what love is and its essence (if it has one) which I'll be presenting in the succeeding paragraphs.

What is it in love that makes our life more meaningful? How does it help? In order to answer this, we must first attend to defining love, finding what or who we should love, and clearing misconceptions about love. First, is to ask, "What is love?" Defining the word love seems pretty difficult since many people confuse love and like as the same when it is not. In order to determine what love is, we must first separate the two ideas. Someone may think they are in love with someone when actually they only like them. So what is the difference between the two? According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, love is defined as a strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties. With this definition, we can already distinguish love from like. One likes a person if either he/she does not feel a strong affection towards a person but rather an attraction only or if he/she felt a strong affection which did not come from kinship or personal ties. Knowing what love is brings me to my second point. It helps us determine whom or what we can love and whom or what we can't and therefore clarifies some points. One can only love something that he/ she can have personal ties to and has the capacity to reciprocate the love one gives. This tells us that love for things, hobbies, or material things aren't possible (e.g. love in playing sports) since these can't reciprocate one's love. It would be more appropriate to say that one likes to do these things. It would also be correct to say that the kind of love that one may get in "loving" a thing would not be the same as when one loves a person. Therefore, the kind of love that gives meaning to our lives is the one we give to another person. Last thing I want to point out is that based on the definition, love is a verb and not a noun. People tend to treat love as a noun and therefore try to measure it and possess it when it fact it shouldn't be. Love is an act that must be committed, repeated, and sustained in the present until the future. This is important because if we treat love as a noun, the vast amount of definition we could attribute to it would be as wide as the universe in which we could get lost and accomplish nothing.

Now that this has been established, we move on to the second question. What does love do to make our lives more meaningful? There are three things. First is that Love gives us the initiative to