Meaning: A brilliant distraction

Through his humorous, sarcastic yet very interesting and thoughtful way of telling stories, Woody Allen has had a tremendous impact on me. He has simplified many complex concepts for me.

I do believe in what Woody Allen said in one of his interviews: Life is meaningless.

One takes birth, lives life – happily, sadly, brilliantly, disappointingly etc, and dies one day. It is as simple as that. Humans do it, ants do it, dogs do it and so do many others. Only thing we humans might be doing different than the other animals is that we use a lot of distractions to make ourselves believe that life is something more than just a birth-death cycle.

For the record, I would not like to call myself a pessimistic. I am quite grateful for lot of things in my life. I need not necessarily be in an amazingly depressing situation to think like above. I might just be sitting in an arm chair in a nice warm room during a beautiful rainy monsoon afternoon, having a cup of hot coffee, looking at the huge tree in front my house rustling around crazily while I am thinking how my life has absolutely no meaning, no meaning at all! :)

Coming back to the point, to distract oneself from this pointlessness of life, the man invents lots of things. Some are outright funny, some crazy, some interesting; basically something that gives your mind a way to find a meaning, or possibly an answer to some of the eternally unsolved questions. It may be money for some while involvement in a relationship for others, sense of achievement for some while god/religion for some others. (Please, o please, let’s not get into the discussion about the existence of god. If you think god is/gives the meaning of/to your life, you are free to have your belief. I respect that. But please let me be free to have my own belief.)

But ultimately, it all goes to a point where everything comes to an end and you are just dead. Finito. All the interesting things you were doing all this time – whoosh – they are not there anymore as far as you, my good ol’ dead friend, are concerned!

So, like others, I too want something, just to sway away from the pointlessness. Some thing which will keep this thought at some remote corner of my mind while replacing it with some other interesting stuff. (Of course, I will visit that corner some times, just like that, to have an interesting discussion between the two opposite forces.)

If I am lucky, this new-found thing might just make me believe that what I am doing is indeed the purpose of my life making it all the more meaningful. That sort of thing would be an ultimate drug, but till then I would be happy even if I find something that at least creates an illusion of giving life a meaning.