What is the meaning of life, and does life have a different meaning for a plant, an animal, a human?

For flowering plants, you might think the meaning of life is to flower. But that isn’t all their life and what if, for some reason, they can’t flower? Blooming is a part of the general scheme of things for such a plant, but surely it isn’t the sole meaning of their life. The flowering period certainly isn’t all of their life.

A tree which begins life in deep ground could grow to be a hundred feet high. A tree that starts as a seed is caught between two boulders five feet off the ground may grow to be a stunted and less graceful version of a tree, but it is fulfilling the meaning of its life. It is reaching its potential. It is doing the best it can do, using the energy within it to be the best tree it can be. Circumstance may dictate the environment but the tree’s innate energy goes into growing as best it can, not into complaining that another tree has had a better start in life.

I wonder how many of us are being the best human we can be? Part of the problem, I’m sure, is that the tree has its life mapped out in front of it and there’s little choice about the where, when or why … or the how. We have so much more choice in nearly every avenue of our lives and perhaps because of the almost limitless possibilities we find it hard to channel our energy in the same focussed way that plants and animals seem to.

But that, more than any other single thing, may be what we need to do as humans to reach our potential—channel our energy in such a way that we use it for the betterment of us.

A forest makes the world a better place, but the trees don’t set out with that aim in mind. Each tree simply starts as a viable seed which transforms from one thing to another as a means of fulfilling the potential within it. A flower is necessary to bees, to its parent plant’s survival and makes us happy to gaze upon, but it doesn’t set out to do any of those things. It just IS. All good things, it seems to me, come as a result of the fulfillment of potential.

So we can relax and stop worrying if we don’t have a vision for how to change the world. We will make the world a better place if we simply put our energy into reaching our own potential as humans.

We can be rooted in one place. We can be stunted, disadvantaged and imperfect in almost every way but if we are channelling our energy into being the best human we can be, we are reaching our potential and in doing so, living the meaning of life.

One of my earliest childhood memories is of crying myself to sleep. The reason is long lost in the mists of time, but the melancholy of that moment has remained. And while from a perspective far removed from that day it seems sad that it would be my earliest memory, I have come to see it as one of the fine but unbreakable threads that weaves through the lives of all mankind.

We are feeling beings. We all experience joy, sorrow and every conceivable nuance in between. Some of our experiences are gut wrenchingly strong—iprnconsolable grief, desperate fear, boiling anger, hysteria and even the emotion that triggers manic laughter can be incredibly powerful. Some have a softer touch—contentment, melancholy, satisfaction, regret, serenity.

Even bliss, to me has a softness, almost a malleable quality that gives it the ability to mould itself around circumstance. But is bliss an emotion or a state of being? A deep question for another day, I think. Today I am exploring the thought that our emotions are what make us human and form the invisible threads that blend our very disparate lives into commonality. Whatever our lives look like, most of us experience at some level or other the same emotions. Perhaps our first breath gives us a fright and that’s why we cry. Perhaps our last, no matter how laboured it seems to onlookers, gives us the peace we have been seeking all our lives.

So emotions are a big part of the human experience. A burning desire can turn us into a zealot, while the same desire clothed in softer hues can accomplish great things without irrationality or destruction.

At some level we can control our emotions. What we say can have a big effect on them. Our patterns of thinking can deepen the possibility that we will follow one emotion downward or upward. Being hopeful and hopeless are the same emotion, but pointing different ways. We need to explore where our emotions take us and how powerful they are. We can find out if there is a way to head them off at the pass if they are taking us down a dangerous path.

I’ve heard that it’s proven that if you smile and look happy, whether you feel like it or not, you will be happier. This surely means that actions can be a powerful precursor of emotional change. So when we can feel our emotions slipping into negative territory we should take great care to create actions that will steer us a different way. It seems unlikely that a physical action could influence an emotion, but it’s such a powerful concept that we could all gain by exploring its possibilities.

Now when I am thinking negatively, I don’t try to change that thought any more. I look for an action that I can take which will make me feel the way I want to feel.

You’ve made it to your goal weight. Yahoo! But in the past it has always crept up again and you have regained all the weight you lost and even added extra ballast. So now is not the time to relax but to enter a slightly different phase of mindfulness. But how do you control your eating when you have always had a yoyo relationship with your weight?

For many of us, the whole weight loss journey starts with wresting control back from the sugar fiend, because while he has us in his grip we are  his puppets—little fat ragdolls dancing sluggishly to his siren tune.

But say by some miracle we have managed to drop the weight and look fantastic. How do we keep it up? Or  I should say, down? Most of us have experienced that sweet spot where we are at the right weight and eating the right food, then it all goes haywire … perhaps, gradually, perhaps in a tsunami of bad decisions or from simply taking our eyes off the ball. Or having our eyes on the donuts, perhaps.

Some of us just have to accept that we need to be vigilant, pretty much forever. We must do everything we possibly can to stay in that sweet spot where we have the control we need. Sometimes I’m sure we have some internal fear of succeeding and sabotage ourselves just when we’ve made it.

It’s not easy. But it is fairly simple. We decide in advance what we will be eating. That helps with control. When we are preparing the food we have decided on while we were being rational and careful, we weigh and measure, using our previous diet as a guide and factoring in, exactly, the extra calories we are adding. That helps with portion control.

Some people think that having to weigh or measure food after the reducing diet is finished is ridiculous … a waste of time … an indication that you have failed after all. It is none of those things. It’s a tiny little aid that keeps us on the right track. If a little weighing is all that’s required to keep our newly slim figures forever, it’s a very small investment in time and effort for a priceless measure of peace.