Lately I have been asking myself the question, what’s the point?

It’s as if my thirty six year old self has morphed with my fifteen year old self and once again I just can’t figure out what this whole shebang of being alive is about. Perhaps, this is what happens when you spend many years clearing out old beliefs systems through sitting in meditation watching your own stories and seeing that they aren’t true.

If all the things I thought were so important are really just limiting belief systems then, what is the point?

This morning I was the only passenger, in the only car driving down a dirt road with only the mountains and a lone moose for company. Stopping to watch the moose munch on the branch of a pine tree I had to wonder, does the moose have a point? A reason to exist?

And then it came to me.

The answer to this annoying “what’s the point” question that has been haunting me for days.

There is no point.

Really, there is no real reason to be alive. We are here for a limited amount of time and then we die, perhaps being re-born perhaps not depending on what you believe and it is simply up to us to decide what to do with our time here.

Well, boo hoo, I thought, that sucks. This is the exact conclusion I had been worried about.

In the depth of worrying about what’s the point I had been hoping that some clear vision of a reason to exist might emerge. Some quantum mechanics solution to the vibrational pull of the universe and how each of our existences was crucial would suddenly become undoubtable to me.

I’m not really sure what all I just said there means, but I guess I thought perhaps a series of big enough words could help a sense of higher purpose emerge. It didn’t, but who knows, anything is possible. It still might.

But for now, there is none. There is only choice. Tom Robbins put it succinctly in his book Still Life with Woodpecker, which I read when I was contemplating these same questions at fifteen years old.

He says, “There are only two mantras, yum and yuck, mine is yum.”

And this is where I’m struggling. Why pick yum?

I mean, really why?

In my experience it takes effort to pick yum. To pick feeling good, being happy. Watching television, blaming everyone else for your problems, eating chocolate and munching on chips, this is easy. Without effort I can do these things. And if there is no real point to life, nothing I have to achieve, no one that needs my help, then why not just sink into a state of no motivation, no goals and no effort. It’s quite tempting really, as you can see. But unfortunately there is a reason not to. And that is, yuck. Because when we live like this we feel, to put it frankly, yucky.

But what is the motivation to feel yum, then? If there is no point, if we aren’t alive in these human forms for any real purpose, if we don’t need to save ourselves, anyone else, or the planet for that matter then why bother putting effort into feeling good.

Because that’s the answer to my question. That’s the point.

We are in these human forms for a limited time and there are so many ways we can feel good. So much beauty, so much love. It is all there for us to experience—consume if you will. We just have to decide we want to. We just have to decide that it is worth the effort. Yum or yuck. What will it be?

Personally, I am still on the fence. Without something to motivate me. Without a reason, someone to help, something to achieve it is so hard for me to want to do something. The reason, or the point is clear to me now, feeling good is good—so why not feel good? Because I’m not sure I want to, is my answer for now.

What about you? Do you want to feel yum or yuck?

Good luck with the answer. Who knows where it will lead you.

Love elephant and want to go steady?

Sign up for our (curated) daily and weekly newsletters!

Apprentice Editor: Jess Sheppard/Editor: Jenna Penielle Lyons

Photo: Flickr