Excellence Reporter: Penny, what is the meaning of life?

Penny Kelly: We cannot ask, “What is the meaning of life?” because life has whatever meaning you give it. If you are a mean S-O-B, people will respond poorly to you and you’re likely to say life sucks. If you spend all of your time sitting on a cushion in meditation, you might say life is a search for peace, joy, and enlightenment. But if you are like the majority of people running around every day, working, laughing, crying, worrying, whining, celebrating, and looking for love, then the meaning of life is whatever you are feeling from moment to moment.

We might get closer to the truth if we asked, “What is the reason for life?” The reason for life is to make it possible for you and every other living thing to experience whatever you want to create as your experience. You create using the force called love, which can be described as an innate, instantaneous connection between two energy systems, for instance a skier and a mountain, a doctor and a patient, a seed and its soil, or a man and a woman. In each of these situations two forms of life come together to create something that is unique and only possible between the two of them. Both skier and the mountain enjoy the skill and thrill of movement. The doctor and patient create a healed individual. The seed and soil create a plant and its fruit. And the man and woman create a powerful love, and possibly another human being. Whatever is created alters all of creation forever, including you – because you are part of creation. From this point of view, you might say the meaning of life is a continuously changing creation.

Life is pure awareness that offers us the capacity to exist. We add motion, form, intelligence, communication, cooperation, and thought. Using thought, we can assign any meaning we wish, but the meaning assigned does not change the basic capacity of life to offer existence, for life exists long before we come on the scene. Life is simply – and amazingly – the ground upon which our crazy, noisy, bumping, grinding, shifting reality is based. The joy and power of existence is the freedom to seize the capacity for life and give it whatever meaning we desire.

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~Penny Kelly is an author, teacher, speaker, publisher, personal and spiritual consultant, and Naturopathic physician.
www.PennyKelly.com

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