The Meaning of Life

Why did I come into this vast, wide world?
What part is mine to play, what role to keep?
In the boundless ocean of plain, passing days
I seek an answer, but hear nothing speak.

What am I doing here, amid the fuss?
Caught in the cares and the eternal race.
Who am I? Why this life, and what my dreams?
And what the meaning of my fated place?

What do I reach for, what do I long to find?
What ending waits along this living way?
Through the fog of dailiness I cannot pass,
my legs are bound by doubt, and there I stay.

Where lies the meaning of my life? The secret?
In wealth, in fame, in pleasures that delight?
Or maybe there is no answer at all,
and life is but a kaleidoscope of chance?

What use, then, in this world, is one like me?
Why do I breathe, and search, and bear the strain?
Doubts gnaw the soul like armor pressed too close,
yet in my heart I feel a living flame.

For however many questions I may ask,
the answer hides in no empty word.
The light of waking made me understand:
life is precious, with no excess meaning sought.

I will live, just to be alive!
I live to meet each moment with a smile!
I’ll welcome with my gladness sun and rain,
and savor every stumble, every mile.

I live to marvel at the beautiful,
to sing and dance beneath the open skies!
I’ll fill the world to brimming with my kindness,
and share my soul’s warm glow where friendship lies.

I will live, and love, and take it all,
the joys and sorrows that the earth can give.
I live to feel, to dream, and to lay open
the simple paths the heart is born to live.

I will live, so that I may create,
that every day be full of fire and grace!
I live to take the whole world in my heart,
and hear the subtle stirring of its days.

And now at last I am filled up with meaning,
my heart beats bright with rapture and with fire.
Life is precious in and of itself, my friends,
and every moment of it, none the same…