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12 years ago I came to the conclusion that if you don’t know the meaning of life then you can’t fulfill it, and if you don’t fulfill the purpose for which you were created then your life will have been wasted. Afraid that I might squander my one chance at life and possibly be punished for it after death I searched desperately for years to find a book that contained a logical, systematic, empirically valid explanation of the meaning of life, but I never found one.

It sounds absurd in retrospect, but at the time I was very hesitant to try to figure out life for myself. However, since that was my only option left I finally worked up the courage to question all those who claimed to have religious and academic authority over my mind, and I spent the next 6 years coming up with a theory that I believe passes the test of logic.

I want to be clear that this is only a theory. I’m not going to start this book with the claim that I’ve found the one true answer or the one true way. God didn’t reveal it to me. It’s just a logical, systematic, empirically-based theory about the meaning of life. This will come as a disappointment to anyone looking for absolute answers, but consider that in a scientific universe such as ours, a logical, systematic, empirically-based answer is the most credible kind we can ever hope for.

Having said that, my theory is that regardless of whether or not God exists, the meaning of life is to fulfill our potential by achieving self-actualization. Even if there is no meaning of life or it’s beyond human grasp, the most logical thing for us to do with our short time here would still be to fulfill our potential by achieving self-actualization.

For a tree, achieving self-actualization just means growing tall and blooming. For an animal it means growing strong and overcoming the control of its environment. For sentient beings such as humans it means all that as well as refining your identity, your personality, your soul or whatever you want to call that which makes you who you are. It means becoming a true individual because that is our deepest, richest potential.

There are 5 steps to achieving self-actualization:

1. Learning to survive by learning responsibility.

2. Learning as much general knowledge about the universe we live in for you to understand where you are, what you are and what you’re doing.

3. Mastering the art of thinking.

4. Creating your personal philosophy.

5. Recreating your identity so that it’s not just a product of your environment but something you own.

I didn’t originally intend to share my conclusions with anyone outside my private circle of family and friends. I was simply trying to figure out what it meant to be alive and what I should do with my time here before I die. As the book was coming together though I began to wonder if there were other people out there just as lost as me who were looking for answers as well. So I decided to publish it.

Before going on I want to mention a few quick notes on my literary style. You’ll have already noticed it’s very informal. I begin sentences with “and” or “but,” use double negatives, conjunctions and other unprofessional literary devices. I did that because that’s how people talk. That’s how people communicate in real life, and I wanted this book to sound as natural and conversational as possible in order to communicate my ideas to the widest range of audience as possible.

I understand that there’s a time and a place for books to follow the strictest literary guidelines, present information as dryly as possible and use a doctoral level vocabulary. I also understand the value in analyzing the most theoretical, esoteric aspects of consciousness and existence. I’m not trying to take anything away from that, but the reality of the world is that most people don’t have doctoral degrees. What most people do have are very real, very hard and very immediate problems in their day to day lives that they need practical answers to, and they need those answers presented to them in a way they can understand. So forgive me if this book isn’t written to the standard of a peer-review scientific journal, but it was never intended for that audience. It was intended for everybody else.

The last thing I need to mention is that when talking about God I use the pronoun “He” even though I, personally, believe it would be illogical to attribute a sexual orientation to God. In earlier drafts I referred to God as “IT,” but that sounded confusing and jarring. So I took the easy, traditional path that most people are familiar with instead. Just know that if God exists I don’t actually think “He’d” have a penis.

CHAPTER 1

THE VALUE OF LIFE

“A man who dares to waste an hour of time has not discovered the value of life.” ~Charles Darwin

“Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create that fact.” ~William James

Imagine yourself sitting on a park bench when a child walks up to you and demands that you explain everything they’ll need to know in life right there on the spot. If you choose not to dodge the responsibility by exploiting one of those logic-stopping escape clauses parents so often use such as, “You’ll understand when you get older.” where would you begin explaining life?

After reliving that scenario in my head a million times, this is what I decided would be the first thing I’d tell a child.

The amount of effort you put into anything you do depends on your motivation, and your motivation depends on understanding the importance of the goal you’re trying to accomplish. For example, if someone offered you $1 to run across the continent you wouldn’t do it. However, if someone offered you $1,000,000,000,000 dollars or told you they’d kill you and your whole family if you didn’t then you’d certainly do it. You wouldn’t even have to debate with yourself about it or work up the strength. Your motivation would be so strong there wouldn’t be a choice. There would only be one path in front of you.

Think about how that applies to life in general. If you don’t know why life is important or how important life is then you won’t have the proper motivation to take life as seriously as you should. Thus you won’t put the appropriate amount of effort into living. Instead your motivation and priorities will default to immediate, shortsighted, petty, and ultimately meaningless goals, and you’ll squander the short time you have here on such trivialities. However, if you truly, truly, truly understand the value of life you won’t have to debate with yourself or work up the strength to sacrifice the petty temptations of the world to pursue life’s highest purpose. Your motivation would be so strong there’d only be one choice, one path before you. So the first lesson you need to learn about life is how valuable it is and why.

In order to explain the value of life we need to start from the very beginning, which was about 14.7 billion years ago when all the matter and energy in the universe was compacted into an infinitely dense point in space called a singularity.

There’s a lot we don’t yet know about the singularity. We don’t know why it was there or how it got there. We don’t know whether it had existed forever or if it appeared out of nothing in a specific instant in time. For that matter we don’t know if time or space existed back then in the same way we experience it today. There are theories that it probably didn’t. All we’ve been able to reasonably deduce is that the singularity was there, and in an instant an unknown catalyst caused it (and possibly time and space) to expand to cosmic proportions. This event is commonly known as the Big Bang though the word “bang” may be a misnomer. “The Big Expansion” is often said to be more accurate.

During the early phase of the expansion all the matter in the universe was too hot and energized for atoms to hold themselves together much less bond with other atoms to form the 118 elements that make up all the matter we’ve found in the universe today, but the more the singularity expanded the more it thinned out, slowed down and cooled, which it did for 150 million to 1 billion years before the building blocks of the universe had cooled and dissipated enough energy that they were finally stable enough to bond together into elements.

The first celestial bodies to form were massive clouds of hydrogen gas, but within those clouds arose the conditions necessary to give birth to stars, and within those stars arose the conditions necessary to give birth to planets and black holes. As the universe became ever more diverse in composition it created more diverse conditions to produce more diverse elements. The continued expansion, cooling, and pooling of matter and energy in the universe resulted in a never ending redesigning of the physical universe that eventually created the conditions necessary for life to exist.

About 9.6 billion years after the Big Expansion, which would be 5.1 billion years ago, the Milky Way galaxy formed. About 5 billion years ago some of the remnants of a supernova within the Milky Way began to cool off and form into the planet, Earth. About 3.5 billion years ago life appeared on Earth. After that life evolved in complexity for about 2 billion, eight hundred fifty million years before simple, multi celled organisms appeared. Oddly, after that evolution seemed to speed up, because in about the same amount of time it took for life to evolve into multi celled organism those organisms went on to evolve into millions of elaborate species of plants, animals, fungus, bacteria, etc. including dinosaurs that towered up to 43 feet tall. Unfortunately for the dinosaurs, they all died off suddenly…possibly because of a combination of a giant meteor hitting the earth and other forms of natural selection.

About six hundred forty-nine million nine-hundred thousand years after the dinosaurs went extinct a small, furry mammal evolved into the first homo sapien. After that, humans evolved for about 90,000 years before our cultural history began. From there it took us about 10,000 years to go from writing on clay tablets to surfing the internet.

Now, with all of that information in mind, go outside the city on a cloudless night and take some time to stare up at the night sky. Think about everything that’s happened in the past 14.7 billion years that led to you standing there staring back up towards your cosmic birth place.

If one particle had been missing during the first second of the Big Bang it could have shifted galaxies and you wouldn’t be here today. If one more or one less star between the big bang and where Earth is today had or hadn’t exploded or imploded you wouldn’t be here today. If the earth was only a few miles closer or farther away from the sun you wouldn’t be here today. If one more or one less asteroid had hit the earth you wouldn’t be here today. If one more or one less extinction level event hadn’t occurred you wouldn’t be here today. If there had been one more or one less rainfall you wouldn’t be here today. If one animal had or hadn’t eaten one of your countless ancestors you wouldn’t be here today. If one animal hadn’t eaten one of the predators trying to eat one of your countless ancestors you wouldn’t be here today. If any two of your ancestors hadn’t met and copulated on the day they did you wouldn’t be here today. Each of your (homo sapien) female ancestors was born with between 200,000 and 400,000 potential eggs in her uterus though only several hundred of them matured into eggs (assuming she lived an average lifetime). Each of your male (homo sapien) ancestors produced about 5 billion sperm in their lives (again, assuming they had an average lifespan). When you were conceived, there were between 40 to 600 million other sperm that could have gestated the egg your mother provided instead of the one that created you. Only one combination of sperm and eggs in each generation could have led to your creation.

What are the odds that you’d be here today? For all practical purposes there’s a 1 in infinity chance. Imagine all the potential beings who would have gotten the chance to exist had things turned out differently. Imagine how they would scream in the darkness with jealousy that you received this coveted chance and they didn’t. Some people might call that destiny (though there’s no scientific evidence that destiny exists), but even it was a matter of pure chance that you, specifically, should be alive, it’s no accident that the universe or life exists. There was a reason The Big Expansion happened and life emerged on earth. We don’t know what that reason is, but everything happens as a result of cause and effect. If there was a cause there was a reason (even if that reason is purely scientific). If there was a reason there was a purpose. If there was a purpose then there is value in the life of any creature capable of fulfilling that purpose.

Unfortunately, you weren’t born with a price tag on your toe. So you can only deduce how valuable your life is, but there’s evidence of your value in how much work went into creating you. Remember, it didn’t take 9 months to create you. It took 14.7 billion years. The matter in your body today was present at the Big Expansion. It has traveled the length of the universe. Galaxies rose and fell around you in the great cosmic tidal wave that brought about the conditions necessary for you to be born. The matter in your body used to be in a star. It might have been part of a dinosaur. You might have been in the water drunk by your favorite historical figure.

Spending your entire life on this familiar planet it’s easy to take yourself for granted while perceiving the beautiful nebulas and globular clusters in the sky as miraculous celestial bodies, but look at earth from their point of view. You’re a celestial body too. In fact, you’re even more amazing than the most beautiful astronomical phenomenon. The fact that you, a sentient being, aware of your own existence and capable of self-determination, arose from inanimate matter is as miraculous as The Big Expansion its self.

The contradictory nature of your existence raises some more penetrating questions. We don’t know why the universe exists at all, but we know that the physical universe is meticulously, mathematically, and consistently designed and behaves according to fixed, unwavering rules. Why and how is it that these rules exist? How is it that those rules allowed for the sublimation of living creatures whose bodies are meticulously, mathematically, and consistently designed? Why is heredity mathematically predictable? Chance isn’t predictable. So evolution must not be entirely the product of chance. If that’s true then what else could it be the product of?

It’s been theorized that the universe could have been designed by some form of intelligence. There’s no conclusive evidence to back this theory up, but it’s not entirely without precedent. After all, we ourselves are intelligent beings who arose from inanimate matter. And in a universe where you can’t get something from nothing it would explain where our intelligence came from. Granted, that still leaves the issue of where the creator came from, which is no small question. Maybe the creator existed forever. Of course, if He did then maybe the universe existed forever as well, but if that were the case then the universe wouldn’t have needed a creator to create it since it was always there.

You can see where speculating about a creator will get you. So we won’t get any further into that for now other than to point out one implication that arises from the existence of a creator. If there was logical intent behind your creation then your life has an extra source of value. You’re valuable to the one who went through 14.7 billion years of deliberate, calculated work creating you.

Regardless of whether or not your parents were the only intelligent beings responsible for bringing you to life there still aren’t words to fully describe how cosmically epic in scale your existence is. And yet for all the work and purpose that went into bringing you here you’ll only have a handful of decades to be a witness to your self and all of creation. In a universe where time appears to be infinite you’ll take a finite number of breaths. You’ll speak a finite number of words. You’ll see a finite number of blades of grass. You’ll meet a finite number of people. Every moment of your life that ticks by was the only chance in all of eternity for you to experience that moment. That makes every moment of your life (no matter how mundane it may seem) infinitely rare and thus infinitely valuable. That makes every moment of your life the best moment of your life.

Despite the infinite value of life, someday you’ll die. Why? What happens after we die? We don’t know. We make up explanations about death that make us feel better about it, but the truth of the matter is you don’t get to decide what happens after you die. What you believe doesn’t change or prove anything. The only thing believing in an after-death scenario proves is you’re too weak and afraid to admit your ignorance. You may think you’re doing yourself a favor by creating an explanation to hide from your fears behind, but ultimately all your self-serving fantasies really accomplish is misleading you in life. Simply putting off worrying about death until the last minute isn’t going to help you either because you won’t be able to make the most out of life until you work through the stages of grief over your own mortality. Only then will you be able to soberly accept that you’re going to die and get on with making the most of the time you have left in a logical, conscious way. In order to accomplish all of those things the wisest course of action is to just admit your ignorance and work within the parameters of the unknown.

The truth is we don’t know what happens after we die. If the simplest answer is the correct one then our consciousness simply turns off and we cease to exist. If that’s true then we need to ask ourselves, what effect does death have on the value of life? Does it render our lives meaningless? Does it matter what we do in life? Does it mean there are no consequences to our actions?

These are all logical concerns, but the evidence points to the conclusion that our situation isn’t as grim as it might first appear. We’ve already established that we exist for an infinitely valuable reason, and what little time we have in life is infinitely valuable. Death doesn’t change that. The value of one moment isn’t effected by anything that happens (or doesn’t happen) afterwards. Furthermore, you don’t have to wait until after death to find consequences for our actions. You can call this “the rule of immediate karma.” The decisions you make and the actions you perform at any given moment shape your experiences immediately. If you fill your life with anger, hatred, pettiness, etc. then that’s what you’re going to experience in those fleeting, irreplaceable moments of your infinitely valuable existence. It doesn’t matter if you’re not punished for it later because you already suffered the consequences of an infinitely negative nature the moment you did it. On the other hand, logical, positive behavior rewards itself immediately in an infinitely valuable way.

That’s what’s on the line. So given the infinitely rare chance to exist and be aware of your own existence…And given the epic scale of miraculous work that went into creating you…And given the fact that there is an infinitely valuable purpose for your existence…And given the possibility that you were created intentionally by an intelligent agent…And given the fleeting amount of time you have to fulfill your purpose in this universe…And given the fact that how you live your life has infinite consequences regardless of whether or not there’s an afterlife, the most important thing you can be doing with your life right now is asking yourself, “Now that I’m here, what’s the most important thing I should be doing?”

CHAPTER 2

CHLOE’S STORY

“Now there is one outstandingly important fact regarding Spaceship Earth, and that is that no instruction book came with it.” ~Buckminster Fuller

“Children are all foreigners.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

“You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.” ~Kahlil Gibran

The story of my search for the meaning of life began 12 years ago, when my daughter, Chloe, was 6 years old. Like any parent I could gush about my child all day, but for the topic at hand there’s only one thing you need to know about her at that age. I’ve told many friends this, and I’ll tell it to you now in the same words: If there were an award for the most curious 6 year old in the world, she would have been a shoe in as a finalist…if not the grand champion.

This was a matter of pride for me, but it had its downsides at times. I had to keep an extra close eye on her when we went out in public because she’d constantly walk through doors marked “PRIVATE,” talk to strangers, lift up our friend’s couch cushions to see what had been dropped between them, and on a few occasions, open up enticing looking packages at the grocery store to see what was inside.

To Chloe, finding out something new about this great big, mysterious world we live in was as exciting as finding a buried treasure chest, but with her it wasn’t enough just to experience something new. She wanted to understand it. One of her favorite games was to ask me a question, and as soon as I’d given my answer she’d ask, “Why?” Then after I’d explained why she’d automatically ask, “Why?” again, and the inquisition would continue like that until I ran out of answers or backed myself into a circular statement…at which point she would double over in laughter.

In retrospect I’ve come to believe that based on her usual behavior the next part of the story was probably inevitable. If it hadn’t happened when it did it I imagine it would have happened eventually, but as it stands, it happened in early spring when she was 6.

April had arrived, and it was finally warm enough to escape from the long months of house arrest winter had sentenced us to. So I took Chloe to the park at the edge of our neighborhood to play outside.

I wasn’t surprised at all when she spent the bulk of her time on the playground poking the newly budding plants and watching butterflies gather nectar instead of dangling from the monkey bars with the other girls, and as I watched her exploring it got me sentimental about the days of my childhood when I found so much awe in the simplest, most ordinary expressions of nature. So I was daydreaming a little when Chloe approached me with that look on her face children make when they’re imitating adults being serious.

“Dad?” She said with the tone my wife uses when I’m in trouble.

“What is it, honey?” I replied absent mindedly.

“I give up.” She shouted, throwing her hands in the air and letting them fall back down slapping her sides.

“Are you giving up playing?” I asked, suspecting that’s not where she was going with this.

Without acknowledging that I’d said anything she went on, “I don’t get it. What’s everybody doing?”

“What do you mean, honey?” Now I was sure had no idea where the conversation was going now.

“Well, Mr. Tree grows just like Mr. Sky Scraper. Mr. Butterfly works just like you. And Mr. and Mrs. Bird feed their kids just like people so their kids can grow up big and strong and have kids of their own. I mean, everybody’s doing something. So…I mean…You know? What for?”

Honestly, all I could think was, “I’m not paying for you to get a degree in philosophy.” But as she stood there with her hands on her hips waiting for me I realized she wasn’t going anywhere until I gave her my full attention and answered the question. I didn’t know what she expected me to say though. We’re all just trying to survive and make the most out of life. That’s all there is to it, and I tried explaining that to her, but it didn’t satisfy her at all.

“But whyyyyyyyyy?” she moaned, hunching forward in a pleading gesture. Then as a sudden thought struck her, and she snapped back up straight and added matter of factly, “God had a reason.”

Before I go on any further I need to clarify that for a number of reasons I hadn’t taught Chloe about God, but my wife and I had come to a compromise on the subject. We’d let Chloe come to her own conclusions, and if she ever asked us what we believed we’d tell her in a non-pressuring way. Of course, children don’t have to spend long in this life to learn about God from someone. So there we were.

I felt guilty for doing what I did next, but since I didn’t think it was time to have the God conversation with her yet and I didn’t have an answer for why God created us all I could do was dodge the subject. So I cheated and told her in a sagely, far away voice, “The Lord works in mysterious ways.”

Then, talking to me like I was 6 she said, “So you don’t know what we’re supposed to be doing?

Chloe stood there waiting for my next bit of time-tested wisdom, but she read the blank expression on my face before I could answer with my mouth. She could tell she’d stumped me. So, having given up on me she threw her hands up in the air again and marched off back towards the grass to search for more clues on her own.

For a moment I tried to laugh off the conversation as one of those “darndests” things kids say, but I got to thinking about it and realized she had a frighteningly valid point. Granted, the way she worded it was puerile, but the idea itself had merit. What she was trying to say was that if we don’t know the meaning of life then how can we be sure we’re fulfilling it?

The concept made me uneasy. So next I tried to brush the question off as one of those curious but ultimately pointless novelty riddles like, “If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it does it make a sound?” but the more I thought about it the more I had to admit Chloe’s logic was sound…and humbling.

I considered myself a responsible adult who followed all the rules and lived a successful life by modern society’s standards. I had the wife, the kid, the education, the job, the respectable friends, the high credit rating, the house, the car, and a few high end electronics. I even had a small allotment set up at work to automatically donate a little money from my paycheck to charity each month. I did everything you’re supposed to, but could I say for certain I knew the meaning of life? No. So could I honestly be sure I was fulfilling it. No. I was just expecting I’d nail it by accident. I was leaving it up to chance whether or not I validated my existence or wasted it in vain.

Ironically, I never bought lottery tickets because I thought it was a waste of money. Why then was I okay with betting my entire life on chance? For the first time it struck me that the meaning of life might not be a novelty riddle after all. It might be a matter of life and death. In fact, it might even be a matter of eternal life and death…but that wasn’t even the worst part.

What really shook me that day was the realization that if I didn’t know the meaning of life then I couldn’t teach my daughter what it was or how to fulfill it. So I was leaving her fate up to chance as well. How could I do that to her in good conscience? What excuses could possibly be good enough to make it okay to abandon my own daughter in the sea of fate without a sail or a compass? “I’m not smart enough?” “Nobody knows?” “Nobody can know?” What about, “The Lord works in mysterious ways?”

To my surprise I found I was no longer just sitting on a park bench at my little suburban playground. I was waffling at a crossroad in my life. Should I go down that rabbit hole or find another way to write these thoughts off and get back to my routine, auto-pilot life?

I actually didn’t have to second guess myself for very long. Regardless of anything else, the bottom line was I was a parent, and I had a responsibility to my child. A father’s job is to teach his children how to make the most out of life, and since I didn’t know the meaning of life I didn’t have an end goal to teach my daughter how to accomplish. There wasn’t a choice in the matter. I was going to have to find the meaning of life for her so I could teach her everything she needed to know to have the best chance at making the most out of life.

After we left the park I stopped by the library on the way home and checked out some books whose titles suggested they might have something to say about the meaning of life. I wasn’t sure where to start looking so I picked a selection of self-help, Eastern spirituality, and Western philosophy books.

Yes, I realize how anticlimactic stopping by the library and checking out some books sounds, but what would you have done? It’s not like there were any wise men sitting on top of mountains anywhere near my house to ask. And when you think about it, this really was the next best thing. If some wise man (or woman) somewhere had already figured out the meaning of life they would have put their answer in a book. All I had to do was go to a place where they keep lots of book and find the one the master wrote his/her revelation down in.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t sure what exactly I was looking for. After all, if I did I wouldn’t be looking. So I began my search naively hoping the answer would be obvious when I saw it. Unfortunately, but not too surprisingly, nothing I took home that day really tied everything together in a way that made sense. So after I finished those books I checked out some more. When those didn’t pan out I checked out some more…and then some more…and then some more.

Some of the things I read had promise, but without exception they were all flawed in some way or another. They were illogical, incoherent, lacking in proof, subjective, over simplified, or too compartmentalized. The biggest problem I ran into though was that most of the authors I read claimed to know the one true way and asserted it would be foolish, arrogant, or outright immoral to question them or to believe any opposing belief system.

Well, obviously, all these books with their contradicting ideals can’t be the one true way. Somebody has to be wrong, but since they all say it’s wrong to question them or to believe any other system then by believing anything (or nothing) we’re all committing academic or spiritual blasphemy by someone’s standards.

I figured since it was impossible to avoid being blasphemous it would be pointless to even try. Instead, I’d just have to do what basic common sense would dictate and put all of them to the test without exception. To that end I decided the only answers I would accept had to meet three standards:

They had to be a part of a systematic explanation. Random, stand alone insights into life weren’t going to do me any good. I didn’t want pieces of a recipe. I wanted the whole thing and an explanation for why each ingredient is used.

They had to be logical. There had to be solid reasons behind each belief. I wouldn’t believe anything that couldn’t stand up to the most brutal test of logic. They had to be empirically valid (when applicable). I refused to accept any beliefs that couldn’t be scientifically tested or contradicted established scientific theories.

I didn’t think it’d take more than a year at most to find the book that fit all my criteria, but to my surprise I ended up spending the next six years studying not only history’s most hyped works of philosophy but most of the world’s religious texts including many less reputable new age movements and pop cults. I read enough self help books to become a professional motivational speaker, and towards the end I even expanded the scope of my search to include physical/social science books/documentaries and award-winning fiction. For all the amazing and useless things I learned I never found a systematic, logical, empirically valid explanation of the meaning of life.

By this time Chloe was 12 years old, and more and more I felt like my status in her life was being relegated to a household appliance whose novelty value had worn off and you don’t even notice when you walk by it anymore. She was spending more time with her friends than with me and her mom, and she was learning more about life from television and magazines than from us.

Obviously, it grieved me for selfish reason to lose my Godlike status in Chloe’s eyes, but what upset me for her sake was watching how Chloe and her friends ate up the music, fashion, slang, etc. coming out of Los Angeles, New York, etc. It’s not that I was a grumpy old man who resented the new pop culture they were being absorbed into just because it was different from what I grew up with. On the contrary, I was worried about her because I saw her doing the exact same thing I did as a teen.

When I was a kid I got caught up in my generation’s cultural movement thinking it meant something and was going to take us somewhere when in reality it was the same hormonal cycle every generation in history went through. If anything our movement was even more meaningless because it was hijacked by the corporate media who sold our own self-fulfilling prophecy right back to us at a premium price.

We were told if we had the right attitude, bought the right clothes, listened to the right music, and used the right slang it’d make us rebels and individuals. Then we’d be culturally superior to our stuffy parents. So we embraced the movement and let it carry us, but after we graduated the media abandoned us and moved on to helping the next generation define themselves by purchasing clothes, music, and movies that rebelled against the pop culture they’d just sold us.

When my generation got out into the real world we were faced with the choice of either continuing to base our identity on a superficial and obsolete culture or losing our identity altogether until we could find something else to latch onto. I watched most of my childhood friends latch their identities to jobs, spouses, children, sports team, politics, or anything else outside of themselves they could find to define themselves by since they’d never cultivated a solid internal identity that could stand on its own.

The only difference between me and them was that I recognized what was happening and what we were turning into, but in the end I was no different because I did nothing about it. What could I do? Become a hippie? Become a biker? Join a monastery? What would that accomplish? Would I be happier? Would my life be more fulfilling? I’d still be alive. I’d still be on the same planet. I’d still be the same person. Ultimately it wouldn’t change anything. So I didn’t change anything.

Still though, I wanted to help Chloe make a better life for herself, but it was pointless telling her she was doing something wrong if I couldn’t tell her what was right. It goes without saying that I tried anyway, but in the end all it accomplished was making me lose even more credibility in her eyes, and she slipped farther away from me into pop-culture fantasy land.

The older Chloe got the more panicked I felt to unravel the mystery of life for her before it was too late, but I’d hit a dead end in my search. I’d exhausted the most reputable sources of knowledge available and found next to nothing. I decided to face the fact that that nobody had written the book I was looking for.

It crushed me when I realized none of the geniuses throughout history truly had it all figured out (especially since their publishers assured me they did). I didn’t think I’d actually have to create an answer myself, but apparently that was the only way I was going to get one. The problem with that plan was that if the celebrities of academia weren’t able to figure out a logical explanation of the meaning of life then obviously there was no way I’d be able to do it. I was too...ordinary.

I started to wonder if maybe the answer was simply beyond the grasp of human intelligence, period. This possibility filled me with dread because if it really was true that we can never know the meaning of life then that would mean we can never fulfill it. That would mean we were never meant to fulfill it. That would mean, for all practical purposes, life has no meaning and mine, Chloe’s, my wife’s, my parents, my brothers, my friends, and everybody else’s lives were nothing more than arbitrary pieces in a cosmic game of Periwinkles; we possessed infinite potential but zero personal significance.

Despite the existential depression I’d dug myself into I reluctantly went on about the business of living. I tried to act like nothing was wrong and continued going to work and socializing with friends but found it hard to be enthusiastic about anything because it seemed like none of it mattered in the long run.

It would have been easy to just give up. At least that would have brought closure to the issue, but I couldn’t shake the suspicion that it’d be contradictory for life to exist without a purpose. So as I went through the motions of life I continued to think about and observe the world around me hoping against the odds I’d find the clues Chloe missed in the park years ago.

On my way to and from work I always had to pass by the large oak tree in our front yard. I’d often stop to stare at it and ask myself, “What are you doing there Mr. Tree?” One day I was studying Mr. Tree when I found the clue I was looking for. The tree contained patterns. The branches weren’t geometrically organized, but there was a pattern to how trees in general look. Then I looked down at myself and recognized the same pattern in me. We can recognize humans from other animals because our structure follows the same pattern. Skeletons follow patterns. Heredity follows patterns. Biology is all about patterns. For that matter, so is the rest of nature: Newton’s laws of physics, the Periodic Table of Elements, chemical reactions, the behavior of light, the lifespan of stars, the rotation of galaxies, etc. These all behave according to patterns which reflect order in the universe.

Order doesn’t stem from chaos. So it would be inconsistent with the nature of the universe to assume that our existence is an accident, and if it’s not an accident then there’s a reason why we’re here. And the most important part of this breakthrough was that you can understand any orderly system by studying its patterns. So maybe, somewhere in the patterns of the universe are clues to understanding the meaning of life.

The more clearly this realization dawned on me the more excited I grew until I came full circle to the original questions that caused me to lose heart in the first place. Even if there is a reason why we’re here, and even if there are clues pointing to the answer, isn’t it impossible (or at least too difficult) for humans to figure out? If the question can be answered, could I do it or should I leave it to the professionals? But who are the professionals? What would make someone qualified or disqualified to find the meaning of life anyway? Do you need a doctorate degree, a Nobel Prize, membership in a high IQ club, or at least published book under your belt before you’re certified to…what? Ask questions?

Even if you don’t need to be certified by an official qualified board of humans, maybe we’re all disqualified by God. By some religious standards it would be blasphemy to even attempt to question the meaning of life much less to claim to have found an answer. If I ever claimed to find an answer would that make me a false prophet? Would I be burned at the stake? Would I go to hell? And if that’s the case does that mean that humans weren’t meant to know why we’re here? Why would God not want His children to know why they’re here or what they’re supposed to do now that they’re here? If God doesn’t want us to know why we’re here and thus how to fulfill our purpose then that would mean He doesn’t want us to fulfill our purpose. That means He’s setting us up for failure. Are our lives nothing more than a cruel and meaningless game designed for the amusement of a sadistic God?

I actually lost sleep asking myself these questions. I knew that if nobody else had life figured out I’d have to do it on my own, but I didn’t think I could or should for all the reasons stated/implied above. But then again, not trying was as good as suicide…and in the case of the daughter I was responsible for, murder. This infuriated me. It didn’t seem fair or logical that life was an ultimatum between slavery, suicide, or blasphemy. I kept telling myself, “This is insanity. It doesn’t make any sense.” Then, after a long night of tossing and turning in bed, I finally let myself admit the simple and obvious truth of the matter. It was insanity. It didn’t make any sense because it was illogical.

There’s absolutely no proof to back up the idea that we can’t know the meaning of life. It’s circular logic to say, “The reason we don’t we know the meaning of life is because it’s too hard to know. The reason we know it’s too hard to know is because we don’t know it.” For all we know it might be so simple a 6 year old can figure it out and the only reason we don’t know it is because we gave up before ever even trying. If we assume it’s possible it doesn’t make any sense to sit around waiting for someone else with enough self-congratulatory credentials to figure out what we should do with our lives. We’ll all be old or dead by the time that happens and our lives will already have been wasted because we thought we could pass off the responsibility of living our lives onto someone else. And even if somebody else does give us the answer how will we know their answer is correct without coming to our own conclusions? And finally, who is anyone to tell another person they’re too stupid or not allowed to do anything?

As for the issue of blasphemy, has God ever come down from the sky and told you directly that you weren’t allowed to figure out what to do with your life? No. It was people claiming to speak on behalf of God who said you’re not allowed to understand life on your own. This is suspicious because if you’re not allowed to decide what to do with your life then you have to let someone else tell you what to do. That means you have to be a slave. Now I may not be a prophet, but I’m not an idiot either. If God exists, He doesn’t need or want slaves. Only people want slaves.

It’s not blasphemy to use the brain we were given to do exactly what it was meticulously designed to do. And it doesn’t make any sense to create a universe full of people who aren’t supposed to know what to do with their lives. If we were created for a purpose it would defeat the purpose if we couldn’t know what that purpose is. Therefore, we must be able to understand the meaning of life. That’s just common sense.

So I said to hell with anyone who tried to discourage me and spent the next six years figuring out a systematic, logical, and empirically plausible theory of the meaning of life. Again, I’m not promising it’s the final say on the matter or that it’s the one true way or that everyone must follow it lest they be punished in the afterlife. It’s just a reasonable explanation I logically deduced from the empirical evidence around me.

CHAPTER 3

THE MEANING OF LIFE

"The great and glorious masterpiece of humanity is to know how to live with a purpose." ~Montaigne

"For most of human history we have searched for our place in the cosmos. Who are we? What are we? We find that we inhabit an insignificant planet of a hum-drum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people. We make our world significant by the courage of our questions, and by the depth of our answers." ~Carl Sagan

Assuming there is a purpose to life, if you don’t know what that is then you can’t be consciously working towards fulfilling it. If you’re not working towards fulfilling the sole purpose for which you exist then you need to ask yourself, what are you doing with your life?

There’s only one possibility. You’re wasting your irreplaceable time chasing meaningless goals, and when you die not only will your existence have been in vain but so will all the painful trials and tribulations you’ve worked so hard to overcome. Therefore, until you know the meaning of life the most important (the only important) thing you can be doing is trying to answer the question, “What is the meaning of life?”

Of course, it’s easy to say you need to know the meaning of life, but if it were that easy to figure it out then we’d all know it already…but we don’t. Why is that? Does the mere fact that there isn’t a widely accepted answer prove the question is too difficult for us to answer? Or even worse, does it prove life has no meaning?

History shows that if we haven’t done something it’s rarely because we can’t. It’s just that we’ve been doing it wrong, and all the problem we once believed impossible were (or will be) solved the same way: through the proper use of logic. This problem is no different. The only way to understand the meaning of life is, and always has been, through the use of logic.

So let’s break the problem down logically. Think of the question, “What is the meaning of life?” as an equation. Now, you can’t solve an equation without knowing the variables, and if you change the variables in any equation you create a whole new equation with a new answer. This means you can’t just ask, “What’s the meaning of life?” because there are no variables in that equation to work with. It’s like asking, “What’s the answer to the question?” You need to identify the variables in order to finish the question, which should really be stated, “What is the meaning of life if…”

The three dots at the end of that sentence represent another reason we’ve had a hard time answering the question. We can’t agree on how to finish stating the question because we can’t agree on the variables.

In the equation of the meaning of life the two most important variables are also the least agreed upon. They’re how the universe came into existence and what happens after we die. In other words, God and the afterlife. These are the keys to solving the problem since they explain the creation of life and our destiny afterwards, both of which entail and imply why we’re here.

If we’re ever going to understand the meaning of life we have to come to a conclusion about whether or not God or an afterlife exists. Unfortunately, the reason nobody can agree on whether or not God or an afterlife exists is because we can’t prove or disprove either possibility.

How can we get past this dilemma? As always, the answer is logic. If all the variables in this equation are equal then we should give each variable equal consideration. In order to do that we have to break the question, “What is the meaning of life if…?” into four separate questions, each with different variables, and therefore with potentially different answers:

What is the meaning of life if there is no God and no afterlife?

What is the meaning of life if there is a God but no afterlife?

What is the meaning of life if there is no God but there is an afterlife?

What is the meaning of life if there is a God and an afterlife?

The next seven chapters of this book analyze these four scenarios objectively to deduce what the meaning of life could be under each set of conditions. The rest of the book analyzes how to fulfill the meaning of life. The reason it takes seven chapters to answer four questions is because both the questions and the answers overlap each other. For example, if there’s a God then there are some things that’ll be the same regardless of whether or not there’s an afterlife. So to avoid repetition and make everything easier to understand the information will be presented in this order:

1. Why are we here if God does not exist regardless of whether or not there is an afterlife?

2. What if God does not exist and there is no afterlife?

3. What if God does not exist and there is an afterlife?

4. Why are we here if God does exist regardless of whether or not there is an afterlife?

5. What if God exists and there is no afterlife?

6. What if God exits and there is an afterlife?

7. What is the same regardless of whether or not God exists or whether or not there is an afterlife?

CHAPTER 4

WHY ARE WE HERE IF GOD DOESN’T EXIST?

“I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.” ~Frank Lloyd Wright

"The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by 'God' one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying... it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity." ~Carl Sagan

There’s no irrefutable proof that God exists. Therefore it’s logical to conclude that He doesn’t. People have tried to side step this apparent fact by asking the trick question, “If God didn’t create the universe then who did?”

If the universe wasn’t created by a sentient divinity then there are only two possible ways to explain its existence. One, it has existed forever. Two, it created itself. Ironically, it’d take an equal amount of faith to believe that God either created Himself or has existed forever. Actually, given that all of these possibilities are equal and there’s no proof of God’s existence this trick question actually lends more credibility to the possibility that the universe either created itself or has existed forever.

REVERSE ENGINEERING THE UNIVERSE

If there’s no God then the physical universe is all that exists. So we only have the physical universe to look to for proof of the meaning of life. So let’s analyze the universe and see what clues it holds.

We know this much: the laws of nature don’t change, and the universe behaves according to math. Let’s analyze these two facts and see what we can deduce from them.

Consider that the laws of nature don’t change or make mistakes. If you study the laws of nature you’ll always find yourself studying predictable patterns. Every molecule adheres to the same fundamental rules all the time, everywhere.

It can be argued that electrons and antimatter behave randomly, but even if that’s true the laws of nature that control their movements don’t. They won’t switch to behaving predictability for no reason. So the laws controlling the universe are still consistent.

If the entire universe behaves with such perfect precision it’d be inconsistent and therefore unlikely for the universe to have come into existence on accident. Furthermore, if the behavior of all the matter in the universe adheres to inherent, fixed formulas, and life forms are made from that same matter, then it would be equally inconsistent and thus unlikely for the surfacing of life in the universe to have been an accident as well. The potential for matter to form into living organisms must be as much an inherent trait of atoms as it is for them to form into a solid, liquid, or gas under the right conditions.

Both of these observations advocate that our existence isn’t an accident. If it’s true that we’re not an accident then there must be a reason why we’re here. After all, every cause has an effect, and every effect has a cause. If our existence is the effect then we must have had a cause, and there must be a reason why the whole cause and effect chain of events that brought us here was set in motion in the first place. Without a reason it couldn’t and wouldn’t have happened.

We can begin to deduce the reason for our creation by analyzing the fact that the universe is mathematical in nature. It’s been said that math is the language of science because everything that happens in nature on an atomic level is the product of mathematical equations: chemical reactions, gravitational pull, temperature changes, etc. So if every event in nature happens the way it does because it’s the solution to a mathematical equation then the creation of the universe, and later the creation of life, must have also been solutions to mathematical equations. Thus, it’s easy to say that on the most basic level we exist because it’s a mathematical truth that we should exist.

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