There is the eternal question of what's the meaning of life that has had people wondering what it's all about. That question has had countless answers, each one may be specific to the person answering the question. The one I like most and makes the most sense is that it really comes down to one thing. That one thing is your meaning for life and it's up to each of us to decide what that thing is. I've started to think of this thing as a sort of keystone to life. It's what holds everything else together. Without it there will always be something missing. With anything in life things can be broken up into several different categories: What you can't live without, what you can live with, and what you'd be willing to compromise on. This is true for buying a car, picking a mate, or ordering a pizza. The same premise extends beyond those little life choices and straight onto the bigger picture of life itself. The keystone is the piece that you can't live without, which brings up the question: Can you ever be happy without the keystone?
When looking at your life it's easy to see all the things you don't have. Sometimes that leads us to take for granted the things we do have. Still there are certain things in life that can't be overlooked. What is the most important thing in your life? It could be your family. It could be your job. It could be some sense of accomplishment that what you're doing has meaning. Regardless of what it is, it's the linchpin to your happiness. I'm not saying it's the only thing that drives whether you're happy or not because that would be oversimplifying life. I'm sure for most people at some point in their life there was a sense that something was missing. For some people it's being single and wanting to be in a relationship. They may be successful in nearly every other aspect of their life, but because they are single, they feel as though there is a hole in their life. For me it's always been this almost indescribable feeling like I don't belong where I am. I don't know that it's exactly a geographical issue. Sometimes it can be isolated to knowing that I shouldn't be somewhere specific, but more often than not it's a feeling that I'm out of position from where I'm supposed to be. Now other things in my life might be very good. I have plenty of good friends. I have a good job. I have my health. From the outside it would seem like I should be happy. It's that seemingly missing piece that stops things from feeling complete. Almost like a painting with an unpainted section right in the middle of it.
I used the word complete knowing full well that most people will always have a sense of life as a journey and not a destination. So in a way even if you have everything, you will always be looking off in the distance at what comes next. Even knowing that there is a hope that at some point we will be content with our life. Hopefully we will always strive to be better or make improvements on our situation. Is it possible if it feels like the most important thing is missing? In some cases is may not be the most important thing. It may in fact just be something that we put more importance on than it should have. Regardless of its true importance in the grand scheme of things, it's importance to us is really what matters.
There are things in life that we feel we just can't live without. I'm not talking about water or air, although I suppose those would be keystones in their own way. Ask a parent if they could live without their children. To a lesser degree ask someone to give up sex or the red meat. For each of us there is something that if taken away would cause us to seriously wonder what's the point of going on. The thing is in a lot of cases if we're forced to lose that thing it turns out we keep on going. It may feel horrible at the time, but as they say, life goes on. Life goes on even if you wish it wouldn't. For some people if they lose that certain something they never recover. Parents who lose a child may never feel completely right again. Sure life goes on, but it's forever changed by that loss. It's been said that it's better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. Try telling that to someone who has lost the most important thing in their life. The feeling of loss may not outweigh all the good memories that came before, but I bet there are moments when a person wishes that they had never known what it was like to have that one thing in their life. That way they wouldn't have to experience losing it.
That's assuming you had the keystone and due to some circumstance it was taken away. So which is worse, never finding your keystone or having it and then losing it? I suppose each person would answer that question differently. Never finding it or achieving some level of completion could haunt a person. The question of what their life could have been like would always be there. For some that would be like an itch that could never be scratched. When we were young we had all these dreams about what we would do. All these wonderful ideas about life and how we would get what we want. Then as we get older those dreams may fade. They may fade so much that you forget you even had them. In those situations are we forgetting who we were? In other cases you may just accept that just because you want something doesn't mean it's something you'll ever get. And maybe that's not a bad thing. Maybe coming to that realization forces a person to stop trying to grasp the unachievable and instead focus on the life they have now.
I guess in the end you should never stop trying to find happiness, but in that search you shouldn't overlook all that you already have. If you allow any one thing to dictate your happiness then maybe you're setting yourself up for disappointment if it doesn't work out exactly how you hoped. Maybe what seems like the keystone to life, that specific thing that's supposed to hold everything else in place, is also the one thing that can keep you from ever finding true contentment.
