The Meaning of Life

The meaning of life?
To live.
All else is conjecture,
And the providence of faith,
Something that we can only define for ourselves,
And no one else.

The Test

Which is the greater test?
What we claim to believe,
Or what we use that belief to excuse?

The joke

We tear and hurt each other,
And so ourselves,
Over petty differences,
Phantoms without substance.
We don’t learn,
We never learn.

We ignore pain and suffering not our own,
When it suits our purposes.
Yet it surprises us when pain and frustration,
Turns to anger that strikes us to sorrow and fear.
And in that fear we lash out in return,
Pain breeding pain without pause or end.

Small voices say, “Stop, enough!”
Louder voices call for vengeance.
Repaying death with death;
Murderers and martyrs to futility.
Like fighting terror with fear,
A joke.

So much potential,
So much beauty and generosity,
And yet we fall back to hate and fear so easily.
We see the picture and we see nothing.
Maybe we should open our eyes,
If we can anymore.

We say never again,
Again, again and again.
Yet time and again,
We forget.
Another joke?
But who’s laughing?

Out of touch

You cannot live forever in other worlds,
Worlds of fiction, of mind, of religion, of politics, of sport, of music, of . . .
No matter how satisfying they may be,
Or what you strive to accomplish,
Stay too long and you risk losing touch,
Not just with the wider reality around you,
But with yourself as well.

Balance

Balance must be sought in all things:
Between reason and emotion,
Between the needs of the many and of the individual,
Between a victim’s justice and compassion for the accused,
Between science and faith,
Between our rights and our responsibilities,
Between work, family and self,
And so on.

Balance is difficult to find,
For matters are often simpler, more certain, at extremes,
And we must be wary of such.

Even when you think you have found your balance,
Test it,
Time and again,
To ensure it remains.

Violence

To use violence in defence of belief,
Or to promote a faith,
Or agenda,
Is absurd.
After all,
No mind was ever changed by a beating.
Violence hardens resistance,
And softens nothing.

Extremity

Beware extremes.
Not to say,
That the middle path is always the best,
But rather that,
Action and reaction are often of increasing proportions.
So the more extreme an action or belief,
The more likely it will lead to consequences,
That will spiral swiftly out of control.

Limits

Everything has limits.
A point past which,
A law ceases to be just,
A joke ceases to be funny,
Power becomes weakness,
Pleasure becomes pain,
And so on.
Try to learn to see where those limits are,
And know when to stop.

Your rights

There is an old expression:
Your right to throw a punch stops at my nose.

Words

Words are clumsy, inelegant things,
When it comes to describing the universe.
They are easily distorted,
Twisted so their original meaning is all but unrecognisable.
Some claim to know without doubt or question,
What this teacher, that prophet,
Or even their chosen divinity,
Truly meant by their words.
What foolish arrogance,
To claim their interpretation above all others as the only possible truth,
And denying even the merest possibility of error.
So, be careful that a healthy confidence in your beliefs,
Does not harden into dangerous fundamentalism.