In the western world, too often, we are brought up in the mistaken belief, that our lives, somewhat like a movie, have a beginning, middle, and an end. That is to say, we are born, we live, and then we die, and upon out death that ends the story, but it does not. This wrongful thinking has enormous consequences because if you believe that your life, centers around your physical form to the exclusion of all else, you will have a strong tendency to want to do everything that you can to protect and sustain that physical form in the mistaken belief, that the choice has come down to life, even one of diminishing returns, as compared to complete oblivion, to a land that none ever returned.
It is this belief, that brings such a sadness to mankind, because the nature of physicality, is that it must grow, mature, and then ultimately decay and die, or in unfortunate circumstances, be injured or die before its time, because of physical disease or other circumstances. While it may be quite tragic when anyone meets their physical death, that person that has left this physical world, is dead only in the physical sense, but alive in consciousness and in spirit.
Too often, people wrongly belief that death is the worst thing that can happen to them or to anyone else, but in fact, that is merely the play upon the cycle of life, the worst thing that can happen is in actuality to deny in whole or in part your divine connection to God and thereby to live a life that reflects an inordinate sense of selfishness which lives out in action and in words, which is damaging not only to yourself but to others, all for the joy of some temporal enjoyment, as if you, somehow, have gamed the universal system.
A great country has an obligation to bring the truth to its citizens, because wrongful thinking creates wrongful thoughts, so that the first step that any nation owes it denizens is that they should teach their citizens to think. To ask the question, what is the meaning of life, is the question to ask, because those that believe that the answer is to eat, drink, and be merry, are going to find out to their dismay, that when you make the pleasures of your body and the lust for lucre, your main emphasis in life, that these treasures while providing momentary pleasures, have done nothing to provide you with wealth beyond this material plane.
While it certainly makes sense to fear the sword, for the sword will take your life, it must also be recognized that the life being sacrificed has not been obliterated, has not lived in vain, has not been destroyed, but instead has been transformed. There is no death, your consciousness upon physical death, has been freed from the prison of its identity with the physical form, so that it must be understood, that this earth is not the end-all or be-all of life, but the proving ground of your soul's development, a divine test of your will and desire to seek the One that has no beginning, and has no end, is the same yesterday, today, and forever; forever patient in awaiting your return into the Light which has no end.