Admit it - the photo below intrigues you? Right? If not, then click the back button on your browser now to avoid any possible head injuries.

Okay so you want to know what the photo is all about? Firstly, I took that photo on the worst day in my life. The reason for that I will not explain. But it does however depict several of my viewpoints on life. I have highlighted two sets of pixels. Yes - I say "sets of pixels" because that is exactly what they look like when casually looking at the photo. I bet you would not have noticed those two entities if I had not highlighted and enlarged them? The one on the horizon is a ship - on its way to Richardsbay or Durban I guess. The second one is a person walking along the beach in the early hours of the morning - alone.

The significance of the small - almost invisible - entities is that it resembles the view I think God has of us - like in Bette Midler's song From a Distance. Many people tend to think they are very important, that the world would stop without them. That they have power, wealth or whatever and that makes them great. But from a distance - like I have had observed those people and ship - even that huge ship - seemed like nothing, I almost have not noticed them at all! From a distance can be equated to in perspective. I do not say people are not important - they are. I just feel that sometimes people tend to loose the context in which we live.

Even though from a distance we seem small, insignificant and unimportant, we feel all but that! We experience feelings of strong emotion sometimes, questioning life, religion, ourselves... There are some questions that will be unanswered I guess at least for as long as I will live. They are questions like

• How long is forever?
• How much is infinity?
• How large is the universe?
• What does "nothing" mean scientifically? Like in black matter?
• What is the purpose of life?

This last question is particularly interesting in the context of this writing. I guess most of us have thought about that sometime or another. But most people I guess did not find a satisfying answer. That question is like religion - it is something you have to define for yourself based upon your religion and values. Religion is like axioms in mathematics, it is something no one of us can prove exists - we can only believe in it. Whether what we have decided to believe in is right or wrong - that we will not know for sure for as long as we live I guess. But then again, what is right and wrong? Those two concepts are relative concepts based upon our religion and values.

All these issues indicate to me that all that we are, all that we want to attain are based upon the one and only absolute thing - our axioms. It is absolute with regards to our personal reference frame, but not from another person's. If you want answers to religion based questions - like the last one in the list above, you need to define an answer for yourself in the context of your beliefs - not seek for the "right" one. You will never get an answer as you are trying to find an absolute answer to a relative question! This will have the implication that you will obtain several (contradicting) answers to the same question - all which are most probably valid, but only if taken into account the axioms and paradigm in which it was defined.

So in conclusion then - as answer to my search for the question: "What is the purpose of life and my role in it?" I found that we firstly need to define the purpose of life based upon our religious beliefs, and secondly assign a meaning to it that will appeal to us and that will motivate us to live our lives to the fullest whilst walking along the path of life. This means we have the opportunity to make sense out of life by our own definition of the answer.

I want to say something about life, goals and attaining them. I was until very, very recently under the impression that we need to set goals for ourselves and work out methods to attain them. That life is about setting goals and attaining them. I had a goal to become an engineer - I walked the path and became an engineer. I set the goal to start my own company - and so I did. But one day I stopped - thinking. If we keep setting goals, and live for obtaining them - what is the significance of the time we spend on attaining our goals other than being a vehicle for attaining our goals? I personally viewed that time purely as time spent as a means to an end - nothing more. I kept on pushing forward towards my ever moving goals. BUT THIS IS WRONG! It is important to set goals, and to devise the means to attain them. That is what keeps us in focus of the path we want to walk. But in the end of the day, life is not about the instances in time we achieved our goals - life is about the times we spent on attaining them. 99% of the time is spent on attaining our goals - actually experiencing the achievement consumes no more than 1% of our time on earth. If this is so (which it is), then we should rather focus on extracting joy and meaning out of life during the times we spend on achieving our goals, rather than on achieving the goals themselves.