Life is What You Make
One of my children is currently wrestling with the idea of death: what it entails for the dying/dead person, and how to find meaning in a life that is definitely destined to end at some point. I too remember struggling with these questions when I was a child, but they’re so much more painful and real for my kids, who suffered the self-inflicted death of their father at such a young age.
In a conversation with my daughter late last night, in which she sobbed that everything is pointless if everyone is going to die at some point, I suggested that, when she has the energy and is in the right frame of mind, she might have a think about whether she genuinely feels that that statement’s true. Considering that, whether we like it or not, we’re all here and alive right now, is there anything that can make life feel meaningful - even if, one day, we’ll no longer be conscious of our endeavours, and nor will anyone else? Being a child, she swiftly turned it back on me: ‘well,’ she said, ‘what do you do to make life feeling meaningful?’
It rather put me on the spot, but I fumbled together an answer about putting at least as much into the world as you take from it, and how that often entails making things, to compensate for everything we consume and erase.