Suddenly, as dinner to comes to an end, the Fox asks, "Do our lives have any meaning?"
A difficult one to answer, I thought. Does anyone's life have meaning? I'm not even sure what could give meaning to life. Is it achieving great things? Bringing up a happy family? Surely none of these give meaning to life. As far as I can see we exist, and in as much as we exist, our job is to live our life as well as we can. But that is about how to live that life, not whether it has meaning.
I'm forced to reply that I'm not sure about meaning but I think our lives have value. No, we haven't shaken the world in any way. The Fox didn't become the great writer he aspired to be. We didn't have the children we would have loved to have. But we do endeavour to live our lives according to a set of values, in my case essentially Christian ones. I think we have achieved some things in our working lives. I feel we have done some good in the world if only in little ways, as we have tried to support friends & family through the passage of their life. I certainly don't think we've done anything to cause serious pain or anguish to others. At the end of the day I suspect that's the best anyone can do.
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