Theism is the view that a supreme higher order gives meaning to our lives. Nihilism is the view that life has no meaning and we should just live whichever way we want our lives to be. Existentialism is the view that life has meaning and we create the meaning of our lives.
I do not subscribe to Theism even though I once believed in God. Somehow, I think that the idea of an afterlife is a way people use to delude themselves about the meaning of their lives. I think that it is the refusal to believe life ceases the moment one dies that leads to the concept of an afterlife. As I delved more, I think that believing in a higher entity and afterlife is just an avenue for not realizing the truth that there is no life beyond death.
I also do not subscribe to Nihilism either as I believe life has a meaning. If life had no meaning in the first place, how did the human race advanced so far? I believe that it is because of life that we are here, doing the things we want to do. According to the nihilistic view, life has no purpose either. However, if life has no purpose, why are we still living when life is the same as death?
I seem to frequently question myself, is life a job? When we grow up from young, we all have responsibilities to fulfill. As a child, I am to study well. As an adult, I am to earn money to support my family. As a parent, I have to take care of my children and make sure they do not learn the wrong values. At any stage in our life, we always have responsibilities to fulfill and work to do. Why are we going through all these stages in life for? Sometimes, I wish I could just abandon all my responsibilities and just quit the long job of life, staying at home and relaxing. However, this will not work. Despite the suffering that we have to go through in our lives, it is the overcoming of our difficulties that bring us happiness. We are not just living our lives for ourselves, but for the sake of others as well.
I feel that we should live life to the fullest. I do not think that spending time praying to God is a good use of time. Imagine if a person who is very devoted spends one to two hours of his time every day on his religion, it will accumulate up to days in a year that that person has spent when he could be using those time to do other worthwhile things. I suppose it’s a way of viewing which things are important in our lives. I feel that we have only one life and there is no such thing as an afterlife. We should not spend time trying to delude ourselves that there is a life beyond death that is eternal. I remember a popular saying, “One life, live it!” and I think that this shows how important life is and that we should treasure it. It then comes to the question of what is considered living life to the fullest? I think life should be a balance of duties and enjoyment. Only in this way can we satisfy both ourselves and the people around us. Living our lives for the people around us and ourselves are interconnected as seeing the people around us happy would bring happiness to ourselves too. For example, the sole breadwinner of a family has been retrenched and is contemplating suicide. However, for the sake of his family, he cannot even though he feels his life is not worth living anymore. As time goes on, if he does find another job to support his family, he will have happiness as he fulfills his responsibility to his family. Therefore, I think that living for others is the same as living for ourselves.
I think that enjoyment is a form of rewarding ourselves for fulfilling our responsibilities to others. I often find that completing a job that others are relying on me to do provides more satisfaction than enjoying sensual pleasures. I often hear others say how much they feel like not working and just staying at home to relax. However, when they retire, they starter saying how much they feel like doing something meaningful in their lives. True enjoyment can only be found when we fulfill our duties to others as it is equivalent to fulfilling them for ourselves.
In conclusion, I think life should be lived to the fullest. We live not just for ourselves but for others as well. Different people have different interpretations of their ideal life and there is no fixed set of values that we should follow. Everyone starts their life when they are born and it is up to them to get the most out of it and make their lives meaningful. Thus, I feel it is up to us to decide what our ideal life is and find our own meaning of life. I believe in Existentialism as I think our actions are responsible for what we turn out to be and what our meaning of life is. In my opinion, we provide the meaning to our own lives.