If you want, you can read books or talk to people about the meaning of life… for the rest of your life. There are probably thousands of different answers that people have imagined, and even more people who repeat the answers they grew accustomed to. Before I had the idea that we all stand in a big circle and stare at the answer, that was hovering somewhere in the middle, we all looked at the answer from a different angle, and the truth was the part we see, like saying the elephant is a tail because that’s the only part you see of it. But now I am not so sure if there is this Platonic truth that we all see from a different angle. I think we are all just standing in a big room proclaiming truths we perceive from the myriad of echoes bouncing off the walls. And we don’t even know who made the sound that started the echoes. 

I also wonder what percentage of people think about the meaning of life on a daily basis or have it as a hobby, like I have. I feel that most people are preoccupied with everyday tasks that are more crucial because they provide the body with essential needs, and this is the most vital aspect of maintaining life.  Without a job, we have no food, and without food, we die eventually. Thinking about why we live is, in this sense, meaningless, and its sustenance makes you only hungrier.       

What I make “of the echoes that I hear” at this moment is that our DNA wants to make sure we are the best host to protect it. And the DNA in us is fortunate because many other paths will eventually die as our sun consumes us, but our human host might be capable of leaving this planet in time, allowing it to survive a little longer. I don’t think there was or is any purpose in this. DNA was formed by accident, and now it lives in a host that likes to think of reasons why the host is so important. Our DNA is not intentionally plotting a course; rather, it’s the most probable outcome as we see it, which is often mistaken for purpose. 

I am not a scientist, and the idea that we are just a host is not one I thought of, but many scientists have thought about it. You have, for instance, Richard Dawkins’s “selfish gene,” which I still remember, without many details, from when I read the book years ago (this is one of the “echoes” that is with me for many years now). These ideas align with my perspective that life has no inherent purpose. The universe began with a big bang, and it will eventually disintegrate, slowly thinning out until it disappears. It will go something like this: Our sun will eat our solar system, and it will collapse or explode, and the debris might form a new solar system a couple more times, but eventually everything drifts so far apart that gravity gives up, and all the individual rocks and other debris will float endlessly and aimlessly in a universe that is ten times bigger than the biggest size we can imagine it is now. (This last bit is just my fantasy)