the meaning of life

I'd be surprised if their was anyone who at one point or another in their life hadnt asked themselves what the meaning of life is. I know i have spent many a long nights, sometimes happily sometimes in tears over trying to and sometimes figuring out parts to that question. I think that even if you feel you know what the "meaning of life" is or you know your meaning in life or you just think their is no meaning, i feel thinking and contemplating about that question still has many benefits. I think it can clarify what does motivate you, and really give light to how you view life and basically why you do or should do anything in life. In my research about this question, i really did have days where i would be crying because of the uncertainty and lack of security i had when i had fully let my guard down to explore this question. I guess i was raised to never ask that question, or i guess i was just raised to have this assumed meaning and all my goals i were chasing and everything in life i was doing was following this assumption. When i decided to question this assumption, shit really hit the fan. I dont know if i just have a knack for philisophical thought and reasoning, or if just some long serious of events in my life led me to need to reason and find truth and be analytical about everything, but i really began a long process of searching then. There definetely is a spiritual/religous answer/part to this question (ill talk about my religous journey beliefs in another blog) and that can give you a variety of answers. I at the time hit this unsurpassable break between this one viewpoint and one meaning and this other view. I was at the time believing and doing everything it said in the bible, and there was this one book, cant remember now, where they talk about everything being meaningless, and that you must totally commit yourself to God because everything else is meaningless other than that. After thinking about this i really could understand what it meant. However i had a hard time giving everything up and had this other competing view that said that life had no meaning, just do what you want. This is the one that i explore more and i guess eventually led me back to end up holding some view relatively close to the first. A version of the just do what you want, and i think the way 90% of americans truly have answered the question is basically to say that the meaning of life is to be happy. Woah can i not accept this. Happiness is nothingness. I have looked and studied happiness long and hard, even before i really decided to look at this question and when i really decided to question my "assumption". I learned through seeing research and reading books that happiness cannot be bought. Happiness is not something that can be ultimately gained by material things. I also learned and experienced that long term happiness is much greater than many short term happiness, and that, i had felt, it is important to sacrifice some short term happiness to achieve this greater long term happiness. This could be seen with my success in Golf, i would give up the comfort and ease of watching TV or i would give up eating foods that would give the most happiness to eat foods that would help me acheive the long term happiness of winning golf tournaments. Then i realized when you start to look wider and broader and more long term you see that happiness means nothing, and even happiness as it is is something so hard to grasp. Sometimes all i would wish for in a world where i had created everything to be happy is a good cry or atleast a good reason to cry to feel some other deep emotion. Another thing i learned about happiness is that without sadness, without unhappiness there would be no happiness, and that we get used to a thing that causes happiness and then it no longer causes happiness. This fact along should make this a stupid pointless path to travel. But beyond that what is happiness....its like this momentary feeling. Happiness is experienced for breifest moment and then its gone and you have nothing to show for it. I mean what is that feeling anyways, i guess it is supposed to be good to have this feeling, but what is it when you look at it objectively and think about it its like just this frivilous stupid emotion, its nothing. And plus even if it is, or you feel it is, something it still doesnt change the fact that it is such a momentary thing. I mean like every thing that makes you happy has a certain time that it stays with you. Like eating a chocolate chip cookie, its like its great for the ten seconds you eat it, but then what, then its done, you cant have it back, you cant in any way hang on to the happiness that eating it induced. other things have longer ranges, like what i said before, winning a golf tournament, (but this specific example will be adressed and broken down in other blogs, basically sports is empty, hollow and shallow, i say) but even this will run out eventually or will not stay with you forever. And then of course comes death and all the happiness you have in the world could really mean less. Especially the shallow, but desireable happiness of being remembered....what does that even mean to you when your six feet under. Why does the thought of being remmebered and having their place in history sound so appealing to people. Your going to be dead, its not going to matter. I still find myself desiring that, desiring the notirity or just hoping that i am remembered or looked well upon, why, why, why why shouuld i care, i wont be able to know or appreciate this recognition when im dead. short term happiness, living your life minute by minute amounts to very little, living for long term, or true happiness amounts to just a little more than very little. On a 100 point scale of it actually mattering though in an objective way they are like .001 and point .002 respectively, and thats being generious becuase its most likey a 0. woah this blog needs a break, ill continue sometime else, i have to go pursue my little short term happpinesses like an animal and eat some chocolate, because i hopelessly instinctually tied to happiness