OTHER PEOPLE'S PERSPECTIVE [final]

WHAT IS THE MEANING OF LIFE?
..Other People's Perspective..

While on the search to identify my own personal meaning of life, I must be able to open my mind, and take other people’s opinions of life into consideration. The meaning of life that I plan to soon come to terms with, shall be one that other’s can relate to as well. I plan to feed off of many people’s ideas and depict each thought thoroughly to create my own. I have made an effort to consult three family members of mine as well as a few friends, and with that my school mates throughout my school were all given surveys we, as a class have created.
I sat down with my mother, Alicia, and asked her what her meaning of life was. She seemed startled by the question at first, being that it’s not typically something one would probably ask a person. After taking a few moments to gather her thoughts, she finally brought herself to say that life is about love. Interesting enough, my mother came to the conclusion that life was all about building relationships with people and creating certain connections with them. “Life is about finding people who are compatible with you. Someone with whom you can enjoy their company, and relate with one another” she stated, and continued to say that life is basically about not being alone. My mother, is a single, divorced woman, and considering such, I pondered upon the thought that it seemed that to my mother, life was all about finding a true love and bond between a person (or people). I found that quite appealing.
After consulting each stance my mother took when unraveling her thoughts about her own personal meaning, I have questioned whether or not I personally thought it was up to par with my own possible meaning, and if it can relate on a universal aspect as well. At some instance, I hesitated to believe that one’s own, personal life is based on building relationships with other people. I could not understand how the connection between myself and the others around me could make up my own life’s meaning. I questioned, if that means that an individual’s purpose to life is essentially dependent upon other people?
Other than my mother, I interviewed my twin sister as well. Someone who I can relate to on many different levels, who of coarse is the same age, and has dealt with the same experiences in many instances of myself. I thought it’d be interesting to see her aspect on life, for someone that is closely allied with me. Angelina’s many thoughts were briefly brought up alongside her strong opinion towards the ways of the society we live. She focused on the fact that she believed the key to life is the pursuit of happiness. I of coarse found this idea absurd for the simple reasoning that I don’t think one’s entire life should be based on trying to be happy. With my own opinion in the back of my mind, I shot out questions in which would possibly curve her ideas and make her reconsider her idea of life being about the strive for happiness. To my surprise she seemed full aware of the fact that although constant happiness is virtually unachievable, it did not stop her from believing that is the point of life. Angelina brought up the burden the society places upon people, as well as religions, and stated, “people are forced to practically live as robots”. She continued to explain how the society controls when and how someone is happy, sad, mad etc. Yet with all those typically contradicting ideas understood, her idea of happiness being the meaning of life still remained. Angelina’s view on the meaning of life is to find happiness within oneself, despite the burdens, issues, and cultures one is naturally surrounded by.
Other than the three interviews I’ve conducted, on my search to find my own meaning of life, it was only necessary that as a class, set out to find other people’s perceptions as well. Our class decided to create small survey’s and hand them out to each student within our entire school, including grades 6-12. We separated each grades’ answers, with the exception of 11th and 12th grade, and categorized the two into the senior institute. I happened to be one that not only analyzed each survey and classified each answer, but I was assigned to actually give out the surveys to a number of classes within my own 11th grade. I was able to witness first hand what it was like for my fellow students to answer these questions. Watching each class as a whole take the time to sit down and answer the given questions with what was supposed to be with genuine thought and truth, when each person received the survey, I’d noticed many similar reactions came across groups of people. The types of questions on the survey included: “What is most important in your life right now?”, “What tends to reoccur in your life, and what would you do to change it?”, and “how does the society put boundaries over your definition of the meaning of life” etc.. By appearances, I noticed that many students had just written the first thing that entered their mind. Many seemed to have found a certain comfort in relying on the archetypal “slogan” answers to replace their meaning of life. Catch phrases, and answers that just may sound like a typically good response, appeared to be very popular throughout examining answers.
Through my analysis of the data we collected for my own assigned question, “What tends to re-occur in your life, good or bad? What would you do to change it”, my partner and I had to group each answer and organize it in a way that can be statistical. Being that the question was open ended, and was not multiple choice, it was difficult to sort out all the broad spectrum of answers we received. Having to categorize such varied answers ended up put a certain constraint around my interpretations of each answer. Being that we had to arrange each answer and classify them as a group, there was a limit put on my analysis of each answer, and had in my opinion taken away from each individual. The responses ended up not being not at all specific to each person, but collective instead, which I believe eliminated some of the true meaning and depth behind each persons answers.
With dealing with the question “What is most important to you”, I found that the responses from the senior institute were most peculiar. The 11th and 12th graders, above all the other grades were the most frequent to either answer it or leave it blank. While all the other grades may have simply answered with an “I don’t know” the senior institute had the highest ratio of those who just decided to not answer it at all. From this I get the sense that it seems the older one is, the more comfortable one is with either having their specific answer or just not having one at all. From this I feel that with age, people tend to either direct themselves in the “black” or “white” zone answer, there’s not really much space for any grey areas.
Based off answers to the same question, but with the entire school, we received the most answers (52%) of those saying that finding happiness is the most important thing in their lives. Along with that, we found that the senior institute were the least to say that they cared about finding happiness as opposed to other grades. I find this exceptionally understandable, for the simple fact that with a growing age, comes a rising amount of experience with things. Seniors and juniors have in one way or another experienced more in their life than those younger, because they have lived more years. Older teen have mostly come to realize that life is going to bring struggle and hard times, and one’s happiness isn’t always going to be the key factor to focus on when other things have come their way contradicting that.
While assembling all this information up as a whole, my definition of the meaning of life has further been expanded. I’ve come to understand that many are just plainly uncomfortable answering such a question, while others bluntly have no clue, and few actually have answered with what they think is a clear and complete answer. Majority seem to much rather shrug off an answer as opposed to sitting down and forming some kind of suitable answer. However, I feel that I can take just as much out of an answer with thoughtless reactions, than I can with the attentive answers. I feel as if the nonchalance for an answer just demonstrates the fact that one is very unsure. And uncertainty and hesitation is a much better answer than none at all! The contrast of views of people of varied ages, experiences, backgrounds etc. leads me to believe that with the overlapping answers, maybe there is a meaning of life that can appropriately fit each and every one of us.