The Song of Life and Its Refrains

The question of the meaning of life rarely arises when we are busy and content, but it often returns in difficult times. At the height of that crisis, it wouldn’t let go. It kept circling in my head, disrupting my sleep and pushing me again and again to look for an answer. I went through different possibilities, but none brought any relief.

One day, during a walk, I stopped and wrote to friends in a group chat: “What do you see as the meaning of life?”

The answers, as expected, were all over the place, from playful to almost philosophical.

One person summed up his view like this: “to reproduce while traveling.” We immediately dubbed it the “love and suitcase” strategy.

Another remarked, “When you have something to do, this question finds the quickest way out.” Or, as the Romans would have put it, carpe diem, or seize the day.

Someone else invoked the classics of evolutionary biology: the four Fs, also known as the survival instincts—fight, flight, feed, and fornicate. Everything else, he claimed, was just a subtle game of the prefrontal cortex.

And someone offered a line that sounded almost Balzac-like. “Money is meant to free you from thinking about it. Once you have enough, meaning quietly slips away.”

Funny. At times, spot on. But I wanted more than clever lines—some kind of coordinate system, a personal answer I could actually lean on.

I started searching. I googled, read, and thought things through. That’s how I came across an interesting Japanese concept called ikigai. The word is often translated as “that which makes life worth living” or “the reason you want to get up in the morning.”

Ikigai is not something imposed from the outside, nor is it dictated by society. It comes from within. It arises naturally and brings a sense of inner fulfillment. Ikigai is deeply personal, shaped by who we are and what we value.

But ikigai also has an outward side. It takes shape when what you do outlives you, proves useful, and helps others. That’s when life begins to feel whole.

Another idea that resonated with me came from Alan Watts, who compared life to a song or a dance. The point is not to rush toward the finale, but to remain in the dance and live through every beat. That thought felt especially close to me, and over time I began to develop it further.

Today, I see the meaning of life as an interplay of three ideas, woven into an expanded metaphor of a song.

Like a melody, life has no final destination. Its meaning lies not in the last note, but in the music as it unfolds. The verses become stages of the journey, while the refrains mark moments of pause and reflection. They often arise in moments of inner crisis. We look back, return to what matters, and choose where to go next.

At the same time, each stage has a goal of its own. That makes life feel like a journey. We move toward a concrete aim, and along the way the path itself gradually takes on direction and meaning.

This path should bring enjoyment, offer room to learn and grow, and leave something behind. We want to feel that what we do matters, that it’s useful and truly needed.

We move from one stage to the next. We reach our goals, enjoy what we do, and see results that last beyond us. That’s when life begins to feel meaningful.