Meaning

I wrote this a while ago on Facebook for a few friends. I figured I might as well post it up here as well.

Life does have meaning.
I know that sometimes it is hard to see it, and sometimes it is harder still to know that you do, but it does.
There is meaning in the way that branches curve against the sky, in the way that the sunset sometimes lights up the horizon in a last burst of color before dropping down, in the way that sometimes it doesn't. There is meaning in a child's laughter and a grandmother's tears.
There is meaning in the way that a dog will sometimes look up at you with such a look of devotion... and immediately afterward eat your favorite pair of slippers.
There is meaning in the knowledge of friendship and in the possibility of friendship.
Life has meaning.
People might read this and completely get what I mean.
People might read this and not understand it at all.
And you know what? There's meaning in that, as well.
The quest to find meaning in the world is everywhere in history and myth - it's a common human striving.
Some people have to find meaning on their own, and some people have to be shown it, but it is for everyone.
Usually this quest for meaning takes the whole of your lifetime, and too many people are brought low by hopelessness long before they ever find it.
Do not be brought low by hopelessness.
Your life is your own.
Your life is what you make of it.
The human life span is something like seventy years and it is a waste, a waste, in not appreciating that length. Too many people are influenced by the romanticism of suicide, the lure of helplessness and hopelessness, and they splinter those seventy years into fragments.
And I have no sympathy for them.
There is always hope if you are willing to take it.
The possibility for failure lies only in your willingness to quit.

So don't give up.
Find your own meaning in the feeling of a friend's hand in your own, the smell of the air after it rains, the bright colors of the sunsets and sunrises in your life. When it seems as though everyone is trying to shape you into a mold, think about hope and perseverance and the bright future that lays ahead of you if you are willing to make it.
The future is never set in stone, and you are never what others tell you that you are.
You are what you make of yourself.
The responsibilities, the joys and the sorrows, the highs and the lows, the hope and the moments when it seems that all hope is gone, the friends, the lovers, and the mentors wait for you, at a point somewhere up ahead in your life. All you have to do is reach out and take them.