Courtesy of unknown author
What is the meaning of life?
In all honesty, I don’t know and I doubt I could answer that question for you within the next 15 years, but believe me I’m working on it. In the meantime, WELCOME to my latest and humble blog post which is all about the question you are supposed to have asked me above.
In my recent endeavors, I have been reading Dan Pink‘s A Whole New Mind as i was before. This time, anyhow, I have been reading his seventh chapter on Meaning and all I can say is that doing so has rather elucidated my view of the world in a few ways. The idea proposed by Viktor Frankl in his momentous work Man’s search for Meaning that Dan Pink relates to us moved me far from where I stood 5 minutes before I read it. Meaning in life is what propels me and it is the reason why I strive to do the best in all the activities that I do. Now that I think about it more deeply, I can’t find a better way to explain my own behavior or that of anyone else.
ANYWAY!
Once again Dan Pink puts forward a few activities that one can engage in, in order to increase his/her sense of meaning in this world. One of these talks about dedicating every single piece of your work to somebody that is not you. He says that doing so will make all of your work richer in quality because your motivation becomes a lot more intrinsic, meaningful and emotional.
Alright… I will do just that then… I will write a song for a friend who is in a long distance relationship.
Now that I have written my song, I am amazed by how much dedicating my work to my friend has affected my motivation and the result of my effort. Most times, I eventually run out of words to write half way through the second verse. Today, I ended up writing a whole song because I wasn’t just doing it for the sake of pleasure and stress-release, but for somebody else who would find more meaning in what I was doing. I made bigger strides in trying to find more lines that expressed more of my friend’s situation.
While I am not allowed to disclose who my friend is, I can tell you a little bit about her story. This summer, my friend was finally asked out by a guy who she had had a crush on for a few months already. The couple had spent a rather happy summer until the moment had arrived when both had to leave Thailand for two different places. My friend had to leave to Europe for her undergraduate course, while her boyfriend had to leave for the USA to pursue an MBA. While both keep in touch on Skype and Facebook, there is no real way of overcoming the obstacle is distance without physically meeting at some place. The days can get lonely at times and I know that my friend misses her boyfriend a lot.
So that is what I had to write a song about. I’m going to share the song below. You can read it if you wish to – If you do, I sincerely hope that you can relate to it and feel the feelings I have embedded in it.
—
I lay here in my bed,
trying to survive the moment,
I watch the walls bleed red,
against an empty sky,
The cold seeps through the floor,
I trip over life back then,
I can’t find my next step,
You’re the only reason I try,
–
Can you hear me…
There is so much I want to say.
Can you hear me…
It keeps getting harder to pass each day,
–
But you’re so… far away,
And I wonder if you’re the same,
I need you
right here by my side today.
–
With the new pictures of you I see,
Makes deeper the chasm in my gut,
I wish I could place myself,
where ever you stand,
And no matter what I do,
I feel like i’m stuck in a rut,
I decorate the past in a frame on the shelf
When all I want is to hold you once again,
(everything I do reminds me of you)
–
Can you hear me…
There is so much I want to say.
Can you hear me…
It keeps getting harder to pass each day,
–
But you’re so… far away,
And I wonder if you’re the same,
I need you
right here by my side today.
–
I miss how you held me close and tight,
You’re not here and I can’t find the light,
The pain never goes away, the days never stop turning gray
When I look far away, the future’s fading out,
When I look around, I’m the only one alone,
Tell me you’re coming back and you’ll never be gone again,
I spend my days just standing by the phone,
Will we ever see each other again.
–
Can you hear me…
there is so much I want to say,
Can you hear me…
It keeps getting harder to pass each day,
–
But you’re so… far away,
And I wonder if you’re the same,
I need you
right here by my side today.
—
Source of Image: http://www.kurzweilai.net/cartoon-what-is-the-meaning-of-life
Amit Garg 