EXPOSITORY ESSAY

LIFE

            Life is indeed, so short. And, oddly enough, it is much shorter for those who lives they find meaningful while it is too long for those whose lives they find meaningless.

            Couldn’t it be that life is what meaning we put into it?

            Now and then, I also ask what meaning has my life really. Often, I feel like I know but at other times, my thinking looks like a useless mental exercise. Life is just so vast, so full of mysteries that before I can put meaning to my life, part of it is gone and the meaning I try putting on it is already partly exhausted.

            Life, so it seems, is like dry sand slipping through my fingers. When I try to hold on to it very tightly, as if squeezing it, it slips away faster. But when I try to cast it away, it sticks on my hands. Sometimes, I think, to appreciate life best, one has neither to hold on to it tightly nor to let it go so carelessly. The sand in the hourglass is life. It is better to let it flow freely, although not carelessly.

            How we take life is often dictated by what priorities we have. And life, being so vast, offers everything which can be a priority to us. A student ever so eager to get out of poverty would say, “Life would be meaningless if I don’t finish my studies.” A terribly-in-love woman would say, “Should I lose him now, life would be meaningless to me.” And an alcoholic, trembling with the urge to drink, would be ready to give anything he has, even his dignity, for a bottle of liquor. Then, there is this young ambitious businessman who desperately wants to make his first million before reaching forty. He easily forgets he has a wife, children and friends. Only the first million seems to matter.

            But now, what are the things that last which could have real meaning in one’s life? St. Paul has spoken so eloquently about them:

            If I speak with human tongues and angelic as well, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong, a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and, with full of knowledge, comprehend all mysteries, if I have faith great enough to move mountains but have not love, I am nothing. If I give everything I have to feed the poor and hand over my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

            Love never fails. Prophecies will cease, tongues will be silent, and knowledge will pass away. Our knowledge is imperfect and our prophesying is imperfect. When the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away… My knowledge is imperfect now; then I shall know even as I am known. There are three things that last: faith, hope and love, and the greatest of this is love. (1 Cor 13:1-3,8-13) 
                                                                                                                   -Mylez '11-