The answer to life, the universe and everything is 42

I consider myself to be a logical person.
I guess when your entire education has closely revolved around finding logical solutions to problems, there is little else you can hope to be.
I tend to look for meanings behind things, try to reconstruct scenarios, work out otherwise mundane stuff just because I can't help it.
I also can't help but come to the logical conclusion, that there is no meaning to it all, the grand question of life, the underlying principle of existence, the reason why we are all here. It is just not there. There is no grand solution, no profound answer, no meaning...and for all that 'great' people say, they are usually as lost as we always have been.

Also, as part of my continuing experiments with good music and my more emotional outbursts on this blog, I'm embedding this video here -

Press the play button, then pause it and let it buffer. I'll let you know when it would be best to play it, a bit further ahead. (Thanks for listening to a horrendously demanding writer, as somebody he's lucky to have reading what he spews).

Back on topic, Douglas Adams, author of the brilliant and awesomely comical 'The Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy' had it right when he said that the smartest computer ever invented by any beings of the universe seemed to have calculated the answer to the ultimate question as '42'.
It is as coherent and as meaningful as an answer like this can possibly get.
I feel horribly frightened sometimes when I see people who I meet everyday, usually much older than I am, but with very little more insight into what it's all about! It confirms my recent belief that I might never find meaning in existence.

Oh, and you can play the video now, I guess. (It gets a bit loud near the end, so keep the volume sane.)

If it's all about getting ahead, getting the good degree, passing the right exam, bagging the perfect job - it has no meaning...
If it's all about finding the right person, having the cutest kids, living the perfect life - it never really happens. People are happy for a few years and then they either resign into a routine or break apart their families. Either way, it has no meaning...

The thing is, I don't think we can ever be happy with anything constant. We're wired to get bored. And there are some things you're just not allowed to get bored of.
You're not allowed to get bored of your wife, you're not allowed to get bored of your career, you're not allowed to get bored of sanity, you're not allowed to get bored of conformity, you're not allowed to get bored of normalcy.

I see some daily wage worker on the street. He's smoking a 'beedi'. He's smoking his death and staring out into nothingness.
He is not unaware of the fact that he is not rich. He is also not unaware of the fact that he will never be rich.
I see this daily wage worker smoking a 'beedi' staring out into nothingness and the trivialness of it all suddenly hits me. I could've been born him. And it's all fun and games to say, 'He could've made something of his life, or you could've made something of it were you born with his.'
Bullshit, that man's destiny was pretty much sealed the day he was born.
He is not unaware of the fact that if he dies a fraction more comfortable than he is now, he will have been immensely lucky.
And he'll still father seven kids before he dies. He knows more than any of us will ever know that life is a cruel fucking bitch. And he will still bring seven more sad souls into the world to live miserable lives.
Not miserable because of material reasons.
Miserable because that's the last laugh that life is going to have, I'm sure; she will, in your dying moments put on a wicked smile and say, 'Gotcha!'
'You had the perfect life, you had the cute kids, you earned your money, but man...I win!'
So if the result of the game is already fixed, where is the meaning in playing it, especially with rules that rarely even let us enjoy it.
In the current social construct of a good life, no one gets to have it.
I'm slowly venturing into the abstract now...
If it's such a game of dice, why are there even rules?
Rules favour players who follow them because the game rewards these players for not breaking them.

I want a better victory. I want a more complete and final triumph than any that I can get playing with these rules.

My victory will perhaps not be generally acknowledged to be one, but in my dying moments, when life finally reveals herself to me, I want a victory that ensures she'll smile and say, 'Well played.'

And then I will say to her, 'Well tried.'