I visited Kingston, Canada back in the summer of 2019 and I found a little book titled “The Duties of Man” by Joseph Mazzini, written in 1907. I read the book in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, and I really enjoyed the book. I have read many statements about the meaning of life over the years, but I believe that what I read in the introduction of this book summarizes the overall goal of our life very well. It reads,

“Life is a mission; duty, therefore, its highest law. Each of us is bound to purify his own soul as a temple; to free it from egotism; to set before himself, with a religious sense of the importance of the study, the problem of his own life; to search out what is the most striking, the most urgent need of the men by whom he is surrounded, then to interrogate his own faculties and capacity, and resolutely apply them to the satisfaction of that need. Young brothers, when once you have conceived and determined your mission within your soul, let nought arrest your steps. Fulfill it with all your strength; fulfill it, whether blessed by love or visited by hate; whether strengthened by association with others, or in the sad solitude that almost always surrounds the martyrs of thought. The path is clear before you; you are cowards, unfaithful to your own future, if, in spite of sorrows and delusions, you do not pursue it to the end.”

My personal view of the meaning of life is to do everything I can to be a better person and to improve the quality of life of my loved ones; to support the right causes and my community; and to hope for these precious words at the end of my life, “Well done, good and faithful servant; you have been faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your Lord.”¹

1. Matthew 25:23 NKJV ↩︎

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