Socrates rightly stated: "… that the life which is unexamined is not worth living." Yet, how many of us go about our business on any particular day without ever reflecting upon this thought. Certainly, you can live life without ever examining it, without ever reflecting upon it, without ever asking the question, but if you don’t make a concerted and focused search for the meaning of life, you are hard-pressed to then discover that 'eureka' moment when everything here begins to make sense.
But it goes much further than that, if you don't examine your life and if you don't pursue the question as to why we are even here, the decisions that you make in life will in all probability be significantly different than if you did ask the question. Living a life in ignorance of the meaning of life, imprisons you and makes you far more susceptible to demagogues, and makes you far more amendable to the dictates of the State.
Everyone does have the opportunity to ask the question as to why we are here and in consequence to build that foundation that brings meaning and purpose to our life. The question must always be asked, because if we don't know where we are going, or what our purpose is in living, how then is it conceivable that we should ever safely arrive there?
The first thing that you must realize is that you are your own person, with your own thoughts, your own movements, your own decisions, and your own life. No one can live your life for you, except for you. Circumstances that you face may have quite a heavy influence on how your life is lived and how your life is played, but the circumstances that you face are not you, these are merely the conditions that you must deal and live with.
Some of us are born rich, some of us are born poor, some of us are born in 'free' countries, and some of us are born in repressive regimes, some of us have more intelligence than others, better circumstances than others, and more of this or less of that than others. Each of us is not the same person as we relate to the world, in fact, none of us are the same person throughout the stages of our life and the paths that we may take. We are defined by the decisions made or thrust upon us and our reaction or implementation to same.
All of the above implies that we recognize that our true self cannot be the physical body but rather must be our soul which is housed within our material self. If, instead we believe that somehow the physical is all that we ever could be, than it is to the physical, to the material, that we will devote the entirety of our energies in a futile attempt to take something that is finite and extend it to infinity. Once we comprehend that our soul is eternal, that our adventure here on earth is a cycle of birth, material death, and re-birth, we will recognize that we are here to give away or to pass onto posterity our wisdom, our clarity, our compassion, our goodness, our balance, our service, and our sharing to all those that will receive it.