I remember pretty vividly when I first asked myself, “What is the meaning of life?”

Back when I was a kid, there were two main sources of information: TV and newspapers. And on Sunday mornings, when there was nothing important on TV, my dad would ask me to go to the newsstand to get the papers for him.

It was dreadful. Five dreadful minutes there, and eight less dreadful minutes back reading the papers. But those 5 minutes there, and the quiet street with such a responsible task at hand, made me second-guess my purpose on Earth.

That exact moment still rings. I was 10. I know because it was a monumental number for me back then, and it was easy to put into perspective and set some landmarks. It was a foggy, cold morning, a typical autumn one where mornings are coldish, yet you can still play outside in a T-shirt later in the day.

Landmarks, yes, by 20 I’ll be done with high school and into university. Which one I didn’t know yet, but it was gonna be something I loved. By 30 I’d figure out life, have a cool job, own real estate, get married, and maybe have one kid. By 40... I hadn’t thought that far. That was so far away. People in their 40s are old.

During that walk, I hadn’t figured out my exact purpose, but the path ahead of me was clear: education, home, family.

Then puberty hit, and I was on that same street when I asked my best friend that same question. He didn’t have an answer. Around then, in high school, I was introduced to Maslow and his hierarchy of needs. You know, physiological (air, water, food, shelter), safety (no violence, war, crime), love (family, friendship, romance), esteem (self-respect, confidence, reputation), and self-actualization (creativity, moral, pursuit of meaning).

Aha! A breakthrough. Once I achieve the first four, I find the meaning of life.

It made sense, but that wasn’t the final version of his findings. It was missing the latest stage: self-transcendence. So I went by the five learned in school and compared them to where I was in life.

After starting university, I began waiting tables. It made no sense to be home given how much time I had. I was training, and since I didn’t need to be at university to pass exams, I had heaps of time.

I was surrounded by rich people. Some had made it themselves, others had rich parents. The amount of unhappiness in that club made it clear that money wasn’t the answer. Yes, it is needed. Yes, life is nicer with it than without it. Yes, it solves a lot of problems, but you can’t buy happiness. If you can’t buy it, is happiness the answer then?

This was a question I had to answer, so I asked around and tried to figure it out. The simplest answer came while I was enjoying an ice cream. If you never tasted a bad ice cream, how would you recognize and enjoy a good one? So, without sad or difficult moments, there is no happiness. It’s all one flat line, so that can’t be it, can it?

After getting my first real, you know, 9-5 job, and hitting the reality of trading time for money, I was even more desperate for the answer to the question.

So I started looking at what people with money do. The ones who have so much of it, they really can’t spend it. They build companies, foundations, university and hospital wings. So their names are known to future generations. Aha, so legacy?

Well, plenty of people have names we know, but not for a good reason. The first person who comes to mind is the guy whose surname rhymes with Gitler.

Plus, does that mean that every person without a legacy failed at this game called life? Because when you think of it, if you are lucky enough to have grandkids, or even great-grandkids, once they die and they will, who will remember you? You will be some random name on the gravestone.

Thanks to movies, books, and unfortunately real life, I once considered a higher purpose as the answer. Like giving your life to save someone else. But again, once they die, who is gonna know anything about you? And reading from a book, “he was always cheerful, always putting himself in harm’s way to protect others” what difference does that make to you when you are, well, dead?

So I returned to my old mate Maslow. And I imagined that if I was financially secure, socially accepted, and had built self-respect and recognition, then only then could I start working on realizing my full potential. Which made me stop looking for a good 20 years.

During which I managed to get married, divorced, changed jobs every two years, traveled to the farthest point of the globe from my home and back, visited a shit load of countries, had wins and losses, and met a girl who nudged me to start searching for the answer again.

Just around that time I got introduced to psychedelics. To be honest, I was introduced to psychedelics in my teen years, but rave parties were never my thing.

But this time was different. What interested me was the inward-looking journey. So I did what every overanalyzing person does. Research.

Read books, Reddit, and forums to figure out the do’s and don’ts before embarking on my first journey.
And it was one to remember. Doing it alone in bed with my missus as my caretaker, 5g of mushrooms, and 8 hours of hard-to-explain experience.

There are two events most people report as life-changing: first trip and having a child. Luckily I had both, and both changed me, but I wouldn’t compare them. One moved me on one axis, another on another.

After this first trip, I was pretty certain I found it. I don’t remember, but I was repeating “beginning and end” and “love is the key” during the trip. So it must have been that all along, right? A clear message from an alternate state of consciousness, connected to a higher being, seeing what’s not possible from here.

I don’t know. I do know that the residual effect wore off, and I wanted it not to stop. But getting high every weekend is not the solution. So I started looking for how to get there without exogenous influence. And guess what, it’s a slow, difficult process. Nothing good or lasting ever comes that easy.

So I’ve settled on the idea that meaning in life changes as life changes. There isn’t one answer to fit all, nor should there be. As The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy puts it, it’s 42. The author claims he chose the number as a totally ordinary number, while fans found a theory that he chose it because, in ASCII code, 42 is an asterisk, and an asterisk can be whatever you want it to be.

And this is the best explanation of what, at this moment in my life, a purpose is: an individual journey and individual interpretation. Bon voyage!