Excellence Reporter: Al Conti, what is the meaning of life?

Al Conti: I believe the meaning of life is as unique and individual as each of us. For me, personally, the meaning of life is one of spiritual inner growth and deep search for my own truth. Since very young I have explored my own path and how I fit within the framework of humanity and have done this in a variety of ways.

Since I have spent a large part of my life as an actor, this added another depth to my search. An actor seeks to understand a character’s motivations – what makes that individual think, feel and express the way they do and try to then embody that as perfectly as possible. In this way, an actor becomes an entire different person. This, in turn, helps expand an actor’s view of him/herself, shedding a greater understanding of how we each function as individuals. One cannot spend the time researching and playing a role and remain unchanged at the end of the lengthy process.

I also studied many spiritual paths throughout my life. This helped enrich my own understanding of the meaning of life. It is in that learning that, at some point, I understood how my own meaning of life might be very different than someone else’s.   Interestingly enough, the album I am currently working on greatly relates to this theme of inner spiritual searching.

One does not have to go far to see how the quest to find the meaning of life is as ancient as our human history. If you ever read the works of Plato, Aristotle or other Greek as well as Eastern philosophers, they, too, pondered this deeply. Yet none reach the same conclusions. Who is to say one can reach a conclusion that pertains to humanity as a whole? Yet, maybe there is a collective “meaning of life” for all of humanity as well as a more personal, individual one. Maybe, as a collective whole, humanity’s meaning of life is to raise the entire planet’s vibration into a more peaceful, humanitarian one and some of this might be discovered through strife and tragedy as well as through love and happiness. There is, after all, a school of thought that says that your worst enemy is your greatest teacher. And maybe, as Buddhism teaches, raising one’s own consciousness helps raise the consciousness of the entire planet. On the same lines, Kabbalistic thought states that the annihilation of one being is the annihilation of an entire universe, thus also speaking of how interconnected we all are.

There is also, for some, the belief in reincarnation. If this is true, then the question “What is the meaning of life?” might take on a whole new and deeper turn. In such a case, the meaning of life – or many lives – might be to eventually, as Kabbalah teaches, develop one’s soul to such perfection as to reunite with the Source of all.

All of the above is why I like the personal approach to the meaning of life, because what works for me may not work for you. Who is to say that the ultimate reality may not be many, unique realities? My own personal quest has always been very private and, indeed, personal. I may share much of that within each of my albums, in some ways, because my own inner search and development is who I am as a whole and from where my music stems, but I rarely speak of it publicly because I do not proselytize. My views and personal quest are for my own inner evolution and I prefer to allow someone else’s truth to light the way for them as much as mine lights the way for me. So, in asking me the question “what is, for you, the meaning of life?” you may get the reply, “What is it for you?” Or maybe, to quote a line from a movie, “I believe the meaning of life is to endure!”

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~Al Conti is a GRAMMY® nominated, award winning composer, arranger, producer and multi-instrumentalist whose music is heard around the world on radio, Internet radio, television, airlines, Spas and more.
www.AlConti.net

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