To begin with, you might wana know who I am! So, Could I say,'' I AM WHO AM'' as Genesis says? Perhaps I should at first tell my name, but I may as well say as the great Shakespeare says, '' WHAT'S IN A NAME?'' Well, leave it, it's not that important. The most important question is what we are doing down here. I'd just like to share here some thoughts about the MEANING OF LIFE. I feel every human being should think about it and zero in on at least one spiritual goal to pursue and give their life a meaning. Otherwise, for a thinking mind, it'll be a great torment as it nears its end and realizes that all its pursuits, mainly revolving around the basic needs of food, sex, clothing & dwelling, was not  after all worth so much toil and dedication, at least not for an entire lifetime. It's time everyone took an inventory of their goals beyond what's made essential by nature for every living being, regardless of its state of intelligence and conscience.

The great Greek thinker Socrates said, "A life unexamined is not worth living."

I suppose this doesn't give you an impression that I suggest you all to take refuge on the top of a mountain and start meditating. Far from it.

I just want to say that we shouldn't miss out on the big picture for the little chores of life. Happiness shouldn't necessarily be dependent on the trivial successes and failures; but success should only make one happy to a modest degree and failure you must take as just another aspect in the vicissitudes of life.

Elbert Hubbard makes the point:

"Don't take LIFE too seriously. You'll never get out of it ALIVE."

Read below what Indian model Divya Chauhan, who also later on went on to win Miss Asia-Pacific title, has to say:

"Many people think that winning the Miss India-Pacific title was the most obvious turning point in my life. It was in the sense that it opened a number of doors for me. But when put into perspective, I feel, all those changes were quite superficial in nature, because they didn't change my personality as a whole. I was still the same person, perhaps a little more confident, but that's about it...To my mind, my brother's illness has been the biggest turning point in my life...He was diagnosed schizophrenic. Doctors said that he'll have to be on medication all his life. "

For whatever one saves will all be lost in the end, be it a handful of pennies in the tight fist of a beggar or a billion dollars in a wealthy businessman's bank account. To put it into a story, once a very rich man died and a man asked another man to inquire how much he left behind. The second man was a wise fellow. He replied, "He left it all."

So, how do we know what we should do? I hope H.G. Wells might help you.

H.G.Wells said:

"True fulfillment is, I believe, vicarious. We get our deepest satisfaction from the fulfillment, growth and happiness of others. It takes time, often a lifetime to achieve this. Parents know it, as do teachers, great managers and all who care for the downtrodden and unfortunate."

Victor Frankl, the well-known survivor of the Holocaust, raised a similar and very apt question about real happiness and the meaning of life in his brilliant book "Man's Search for Meaning,

And so might the Russian writer Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev:

"There's only one way for an individual to remain upright, not to fall to pieces, not to sink into the mire of self-oblivion...or self-contempt. That's calmly to turn away from everything, to say, 'Enough!' and, folding one's useless arms across one's empty breast, to retain the ultimate, the sole attainable virtue, the virtue of recognizing one's own insignificance."

Let me sum it up, again borrowing from Turgenev:

" What's terrible is that there's nothing terrible, that the very essence of life is petty, uninteresting, and degradingly trite.