To Be a Human Being
Misato—
So f**king what if I’m not you?! That doesn’t mean it's okay for you to give up! If you do, I’ll never forgive you as long as I live. God knows I’m not perfect either. I’ve made tons of stupid mistakes and later I regretted them. And I’ve done it over and over again, thousands of times. A cycle of hollow joy and vicious self-hatred. But even so, every time I learned something about myself. Please, Shinji. You’ve got to pilot Eva and settle this once and for all. For your own sake. Find out why you came here. Why do you exist at all? Answer your own questions. And when you’ve found your answers, come back to me. I’ll be waiting for you. Promise me.
—Neon Genesis Evangelion, The End of Evangelion, Hideaki Anno
North Polar Layers | UAHiRISE (NASA)
People say that what we're all seeking is Meaning in life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think what we're seeking is an experience of being alive so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonance within our own innermost being and reality so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive. That's what it's all finally about.
—Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth, Episode 2, Chapter 4
I love you and I forgive you. I am like you and you are like me. I love all people. I love the world. I love creating. Everything in our life should be based on love.—Ray Bradbury, Sci-fi Legend, Ray Bradbury on God, Monsters and Angels, John Blake, CNN—Living (2 August 2010)
The defrosted margin of the North Polar Erg | UAHiRISE (NASA)
You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.
—Albert Camus, Intuitions (October 1932), Youthful Writings (1976)
An impact crater on Planum Boreum, or North Polar deposits of Mars, observed by HiRISE on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter| UAHiRISE (NASA)
In our lives, there is a simple colour, as on an artist's palette, which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the colour of love.
—Marc Chagall, C. Robertson (1998), Dictionary of Quotations, p. 78
Martian sunset | NASA's Mars Exploration Rover
To live is to experience things, not sit around pondering the meaning of life.—Paulo Coelho (2011), Aleph
An artist's concept portrays a NASA Mars Exploration Rover on the surface of Mars | NASA/JPL/Cornell University, Maas Digital LLC
What is the meaning of human life or of organic life altogether? To answer this question at all implies a religion. Is there any sense then, you ask, in putting it? I answer, the man who regards his own life and that of his fellow-creatures as meaningless is not merely unfortunate but almost disqualified for life.
—Albert Einstein, The World As I See It (1949)
Descent from the Summit of Husband Hill | NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
The only meaning of life worth caring about is one that can withstand our best efforts to examine it.
—Daniel Dennett (1995), Darwin's Dangerous Idea
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter showing the descent of Phoenix with a crater in the background | NASA/Jet Propulsion Lab-Caltech/University of Arizona
Sometimes I wonder if suicides aren't, in fact, sad guardians of the meaning of life.
—Václav Havel (1986), Disturbing the Peace, Chapter 5 I-J
Victoria Crater from Cape Verde | NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell
Man can find meaning in life, short and perilous as it is, only through devoting himself to society.
—Albert Einstein, Why Socialism? (1949)
NASA's Mars missions, clockwise from top left: Perseverance rover and Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, InSight lander, Odyssey orbiter, MAVEN orbiter, Curiosity rover, and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter | NASA/JPL-Caltech
No more harmful nonsense exists than [the] common supposition that deepest insight into great questions about the meaning of life or the structure of reality emerges most readily when a free, undisciplined and uncluttered (read rather ignorant and uneducated) mind soars above mere earthly knowledge and concern.
—Stephen Jay Gould (2002), I Have Landed, No Science Without Fancy, No Art Without Facts, p. 48
Popular Landform in Cydonia Region | NASA / JPL / University of Arizona
Amy—One day, I'm going to find a man who thinks I'm the meaning of life.—Judging Amy (1999–2005), Season 3, Off the grid, Darkness For Light
Popular Landform in Cydonia Region | NASA / JPL / University of Arizona
I get up very early in the morning. I enjoy the quietness, the stillness, and the rawness in the winter and fall. It's a special time.
—Ted Kennedy Esquire—The Meaning of Life (2009), p. 81
Popular Landform in Cydonia Region | NASA / JPL / University of Arizona
The meaning of life is that it is to be lived, and it is not to be traded and conceptualised and squeezed into a pattern of systems.
—Bruce Lee (2000), Striking Thoughts, edited by John Little, p. 3
Endurance, Mars | NASA/JPL/Cornell
Chairman—Item six on the agenda, is the Meaning of Life. Now, Harry, you’ve had some thoughts on this.
Harry—That’s right, yeah. I’ve had a team working on this over the past few weeks and what we’ve come up with can be reduced to two fundamental concepts. One, people are not wearing enough hats. Two, matter is energy. In the Universe, there are many energy fields, which we cannot normally perceive. Some energies have a spiritual source, which acts upon a person’s soul. However, this soul does not exist ab initio as orthodox Christianity teaches; it has to be brought into existence by a process of guided self-observation. However, this is rarely achieved owing to man’s unique ability to be distracted from spiritual matters by everyday trivia.
[Pause]
Max—What was that about hats?
Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (1983), Part V—Live Organ Transplants
An enhanced-UV image of Mars captured by the OSIRIS instrument on the Rosetta spacecraft during its February 2007 flyby | ESA & MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/RSSD/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA | CC BY-SA IGO 3.0
The way to recover the meaning of life and the worthwhileness of life is to recover the power of experience, to have impulse voices from within and to be able to hear these impulse voices from within and make the point—This can be done.
—Abraham Maslow, The Meaning of Life—According to the Great and the Good (2007), edited by Richard T. Kinnier
The Martian north pole as seen by Mars Express' HRSC instrument | Justin Cowart | CC BY-SA IGO 3.0
You're talking about a search for the meaning of life? I asked. No, no, no, he said. For the experience of being alive.
—Bill Moyers (1988), The Power of Myth
There's a reason for the world you and I.—John Ondrasik (2006), The Riddle
People search for the meaning of life, but this is the easy question—we are born into a world that presents us with many millennia of collected knowledge and information, and all our predecessors ask of us is that we not waste our brief life ignoring the past only to rediscover or reinvent its lessons badly.
—Erik Naggum, Knowledge and Information
Mars Express captured this wide view across Mars' north pole and south towards Acidalia Planitia on 7 April 2014 | ESA / DLR / FU Berlin / Justin Cowart | CC BY-SA IGO 3.0
Many solutions are offered as to how to gain something more in life. Wealth, strength and keenness of intellect, taken separately or together do not constitute the essence of real life. At its best, life consists of these things, plus something more. In Jesus Christ, we see perfection in life. From an imperfect understanding of Jesus Christ, it would appear that real-life depends upon the fulfilling of three conditions—dwelling on friendly and affectionate terms with God, with ourselves, and with our fellowmen. If we fulfil to any degree these three conditions of being in friendly relations with God, ourselves and our fellows, we shall discover something more of the meaning of life.
—Kirby Page (1920), Something More, A Consideration of the Vast, Undeveloped Resources of Life, p. 63-67
Wrinkle ridges on the planet Mars in the Melas region|ESA/DLR/FU Berlin|CC BY-SA IGO 3.0
A rift on the planet Mars in the Tempe Terra region can be seen stretching from the top to the bottom of the image | ESA/DLR/FU Berlin | CC BY-SA IGO 3.0
To sum up […] my deepest conviction. What lives on—
1. Our humble day-to-day lives
2. Art
3. God.
—Irène Némirovsky, notebook entry (1 July 1942), Suite Française (2004), Appendix I, London, Vintage Books, 2007, p. 462
Opportunity rover traverse maps—Sol 3492
Every human being, no matter how slightly gifted he is, however subordinate his position in life may be, has a natural need to formulate a life-view, a conception of the meaning of life and of its purpose.
—Søren Kierkegaard (1943)
An artist's impression of a terraformed Mars centred over Valles Marineris. The Tharsis region can be seen on the left side of the globe | Daein Ballard | Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported
An artist's impression of a terraformed Mars | Author Ittiz from Wikimedia Commons | Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported
Life is writing. The sole purpose of mankind is to engrave the thoughts of divinity onto the tablets of nature.
—Friedrich Schlegel, On Philosophy—To Dorothea, in Theory as Practice (1997), p. 420.
Mars Altimetry—NASA/MGS/MOLA; Clouds—NASA | Kevin Gill | Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic
Each man must look to himself to teach him the meaning of life. It is not something discovered; it is something moulded.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupery (2012), Airman's Odyssey, p. 28
An artist's rendering of the Mars Ice Home concept | NASA/Clouds AO/Search
Grim—If you know everything, then what's the meaning of life?
Master Control—Life has no meaning; only machine intelligence is truly significant on a cosmic scale.
Grim—Hmm, I didn't think he'd get that one right.
The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, The Bad News Ghouls / The House of No Tomorrow [4.12]
The Twin Peaks | NASA/JPL
Speak to all men as you do to yourself, with no concern for the effect you make, so that you do not shut them out from your world lest in isolation the meaning of life slips out of sight and you lose the belief in the perfection of creation.
—Leó Szilárd (1961) The Voice of the Dolphins—And Other Stories—Third of the Ten Commandments
Moreux crater on Mars | ESA/DLR/FU Berlin | CC BY-SA IGO 3.0
If you do not know your place in the world and the meaning of your life, you should know there is something to blame, and it is not the social system or your intellect, but the way in which you have directed your intellect.
—Leo Tolstoy (1903-10), A Calendar of Wisdom
An avalanche on Mars, 19 February 2008 | NASA
The radical tension between good and evil, as man sees it and feels it, does not have the last word about the meaning of life and the nature of existence. There is a spirit in man and in the world working always against the thing that destroys and lays waste. Always he must know that the contradictions of life are not final or ultimate; he must distinguish between failure and a many-sided awareness so that he will not mistake conformity for harmony, uniformity for synthesis. He will know that for all men to be alike is the death of life in man and yet perceive harmony that transcends all diversities and in which diversity finds its richness and significance.
—Howard Thurman (1971), The Search For Common Ground—An Inquiry Into The Basis Of Man's Experience Of Community, p. 6
Everyone now knows how to find the meaning of life within himself.—Kurt Vonnegut (1959), The Sirens of Titan
One cannot ignore half of life, for the purposes of science, and then claim that the results of science give a full and adequate picture of the meaning of life. All discussions of life, which begin with a description of man's place on a speck of matter in space, on an endless evolutionary scale, are bound to be half-measures because they leave out most of the experiences, which are important to us as human beings.
—Colin Wilson (1957), Religion and the Rebel, p. 309
The Colour Wonderland of Mawrth Vallis | NASA
INTERVIEWER—Tell us a joke.WHEDON—Your life has meaning.INTERVIEWER—Tell us a secret.WHEDON—Your life has meaning.—Joss Whedon (27 April 2012) in Rosanna Greenstreet, Q & A—Joss Whedon, The Guardian
To believe in a God means to understand the question about the meaning of life.To believe in a God means to see that the facts of the world are not the end of the matter.To believe in God means to see that life has a meaning.—Ludwig Wittgenstein Journal entry (8 July 1916), p. 74e
An impact crater on Mars | NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
What is the meaning of life? That was all—a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years. The great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead, there were little daily miracles, illuminations and matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one.
—Virginia Woolf (1927), To the Lighthouse
A dark pit on a Martian volcano | NASA / Jet Propulsion Laboratory / University of Arizona
Each new generation asks—What is the meaning of life? A more fertile way of putting the question would be—Why does a man need meaning in life?
—Peter Wessel Zapffe (1989-90), To Be a Human Being
Sand cascades on Mars | NASA/JPL/University of Arizona
