What is the meaning of life?

I used to think that the meaning of life was that life had no meaning and you were meant to give it meaning.  That life, was a gift.  You can believe in a God and believe they gave you life or you can stay a little more grounded and think of life as a gift from your parents as without both of them you wouldn't be here.  In a way then life is your first birthday present and probably the only one you will keep until your dying day.

That's what I used to think but recently my thoughts have been changing and my feelings are leading me to another conclusion.  I'm beginning to think that life is defined as a constant struggle against loneliness.  Both individually and collectively.  As an individual you will battle loneliness your entire life.  Some people gather friends and walk through life together - friendships don't always last and you can be surrounded by people one day and alone the next.  You can be completely alone in a crowded room and that's a pain I think most people have felt at some point in their lives. 

Finding a romantic love seems to be the path most people travel down, in the hopes that they find someone who they will live happily ever after with.  That's a puerile sentiment however, it's an overly simplified way at looking at relationships.  Finding someone you can love is one thing, finding someone who loves you is another - but even if you manage both of these, staying together isn't straight forward either.  Relationships take a lot of work.  You both have to communicate and you both have to be committed.  If you're not then you will often find yourself breaking up and parting ways or you find yourselves in the friend zone where love becomes love of a different kind.  Ending up there is not necessarily a bad thing, there are many pressures and expectations that are relinquished when you remove the complications of being in an actual relationship.  Perhaps most prominent is that the ability to trust someone becomes less intense.  That might just be because there is "less riding on it"

What people don't tell you when you are a kid and you see the movies and the games and hear the stories of happy ever after, is that you might not find them.  That's something that's not easy to tell someone; which is probably why it's something we don't really acknowledge.  The idea of never finding love, at least in the three mediums I said above, is often attributed to people who are cold, careless, callous, and bitter.  Generally "the bad guy" - the idea that if you are good, kind, caring, and generous you will find love is yet another over simplification.  You can be all those things and still not find love.  It would certainly not be for the lack of trying for many people.  No the reality that you might not find someone is something that we don't like talking about so we ignore it like the white elephant in the room.  Yet you think it.  Everyone knows its there.  When you're alone and have only your thoughts to keep you company you look at it, sometimes only a fleeting glance but at others you sit and stare.  Its foreboding presence towers over you.

I asked on twitter why anyone would have an empty relationship.  It was in response to something that happened to two friends of mine, two that became one and then became none.  Without going into all the details here suffice to say that one of them used the other.  The reason I think is that they were paralysed by the fear of being alone.

I don't have many friends but the ones I have are close to my heart and I would do anything for them and I know they would do anything for me.  I don't have many friends because I never learned how to "fake it" and maintain empty friendships.  The kind where you are friends for the sake of it, for some potential gain, or for the sake of not wanting to be alone.  I can't do that.  If I don't care about you I can't pretend that I do - which is why I find it hard to believe the couple above lasted a year and a half if they knew; one of them had to have lied to the other, every day of their relationship to be able to do that.

As a race mankind has asked many times are we alone in the Universe.  That is quite poetic as it echoes our individual fight against loneliness; as a race we look to the stars united and ask the same question - can we find life out there?

Just as there are 7 billion people on Earth and the possibility certainly exists of finding someone; the Universe is vast and mathematically given its size the probability that life does exist is almost certain.  However just as the likelihood that we would be able to find it is slim the likelihood that you can find "the one" if they exist is slim too.  If "the one" exists you can't even assert whether they would live in the same country as you. 

If the likelihood of finding the one is so slim then does that mean by virtue of the number of people in relationships that we eventually widen our net, conceding things which would have once dismissed someone as a possible love interest?  Some people say you eventually "settle" - how many people around you in relationships do you think settled?   The idea that you "settle down" is not meant to imply that meaning its meant to mean something else but the more I think about it the more I would argue that's what it actually means.  "Settling down" is essentially giving up on finding "the one" and looking instead for "any one" - which in and of itself is sad - if both are not committed.  If you settle then settle for life, don't settle for someone until something "better" comes along.  The couple I mentioned above broke up when one of them found someone who for all intents and purposes was their ideal partner.  I don't know if he was "the one" but he was certainly pretty close to what they had always wanted.  That didn't do anything to comfort their ex however, as you can imagine they were heartbroken and I am not even sure whether they ever found anyone else.

There is however something you should remember.  Although the person that first said this to me was a hypocrite, the sentiment remains: to be alone does not have to mean you are lonely.  Loneliness is the absence of happiness when you are alone.  If you can be happy in life, even when you are alone then you'll never be lonely.  You can define happiness however you like it will be different things to different people.  I guess if happiness has no set meaning but one we set out to define then we come full circle.  Maybe the question should simply be what does it mean to be happy rather than what is the meaning of life?