The Meaning Of Life

It’s that time of year again. Everywhere you look, people are wrapping up the last twelve months and declaring the next one as some new mantra for how they’ll live their lives. Versions of New Year’s resolutions, moving on, moving forward, changing habits, creating new ones. Whatever it is, someone is writing about it.

I started paying attention to patterns. Were there trends? Waves pushing people in certain directions? I’ve noticed that when I see a post on social media, I feel an almost immediate attraction or aversion to it. That reaction made me think about the foundation of social media itself: what it pulls us toward, what it pulls us away from, and how quietly it shapes the track we’re on.

That reflection followed me into a very real experience.

For Christmas, I took my family to Disneyland. We hadn’t been there together as a full family in about ten years. With both kids now adults, I had the sense this might be the last trip before the next generation enters our lives (that’s code for becoming grandparents, which somehow feels easier when disguised that way).

While we were there, we got to choose which rides we went on, but that’s where the first thought really landed. We could only choose from rides that Disneyland had already decided to create. It didn’t matter if I wanted something different. If the ride didn’t exist, I wasn’t going on it.

If I wanted something else entirely, I’d have to go to a different theme park. And even then, I’d still be choosing from what that park decided to offer.

Back at Disneyland, there were rides that pulled me in through nostalgia. The park is filled with both small children and large children, adults who go not just for their kids, but to reconnect with who they were before work, relationships, parenting, aging parents, and responsibility took over. You know the feeling.

So I chose those rides. My kids chose theirs. My husband chose his. Mostly, we like the same ones, just in a slightly different order.

But I also noticed people lining up for hours for rides I couldn’t imagine waiting that long for.

That’s when the social media parallel became impossible to ignore.

When I pause on something in my feed, even briefly, the algorithm notices. Then it fills my feed with more of the same. There are posts, images, and videos I scroll past without a second thought, the same way I walk past certain rides at Disneyland without even looking at them. Eventually, those rides disappear from view altogether.

And yet, when I start talking about something, out loud, casually, it seems to suddenly appear everywhere. Images. Stories. Videos. Posts.

So where am I going with all this?

It brought me back to the question of the meaning of life.

Each of us is living inside our own version of a theme park (or social media). We don’t all have access to the same rides. Culture, country, family, race, religion, work, belief systems, these all shape what our park looks like. Social media has become the portal that lets us see there are other parks out there. Some that inspire us. Some that completely clash with our own.

I can’t possibly understand what life is like for everyone else. I’m not sure I’m meant to. What I’ve found myself trying to understand instead is what my life is meant to be about.

Much like my ideal Disneyland trip, I’d replace some things, keep others, and create a park that overlaps with my family and a few close friends. There would be intersections and many places where paths never cross at all.

I’m 54 now. I’ll be 55 in a couple of months. I’ve heard the question “What’s the meaning of life?” at many points along the way. In policing it was often late at night, after long hours on major files that went nowhere, cases without resolution, time spent away from family. In those moments, the question wasn’t philosophical. It was heavy.

I always come back to Jack Palance’s line in City Slickers:“The meaning of life is one thing. It’s up to you to figure out what that is.”

I hear younger generations talk about being millionaires by 30, famous by 25, untethered from cubicles and nine-to-five lives. I used to shake my head. I used to think social media had poisoned their brains (in many cases I still do).

But meaning changes with time.

When I was younger, I wanted direction, stability, financial security, and a family of my own. It took years, but I built those things.

It’s not my place to tell anyone else what their life should be about. Eventually, we all reach the end of the line for our final ride, the one that reflects how we spent our time. You want to be at peace with that choice.

Writing Tightrope forced me to break my life into chapters. I realized the first 27 years were about discovering my park, what I loved, what I didn’t, which rides I’d never get on again, and which I couldn’t imagine living without.

The next 27 years were about racing through it all: becoming a police officer, getting married, raising children, building a career, and making sure everyone around me had meaningful experiences, even when it meant prioritizing their happiness over my own.

Then policing ended. My children became adults. Parents and loved ones began dying. Health moved from the background to the foreground. I did the math. Another 27 years would bring me to 81.

The meaning of life feels different now, because life is different.

The park may look similar, but I no longer queue for every ride. I can see the lines. I just know they aren’t for me anymore.

What is for me now is watching my children build their own parks. Encouraging them to find what they love, not what I loved, not what I chose for them, but something entirely their own.

That’s my meaning now: understanding there is no single meaning of life. You’ve been given a pass. Have the experiences. Choose the rides. Skip the ones that don’t fit. And sometimes, get on a ride you don’t love, because you love the person sitting beside you.

And if your park no longer fits, go find another one. There are thousands. The only real limit is your courage to look.

On our last night at Disneyland, our final family ride was the IncrediCoaster. It’s not my favorite ride in the park.

But I rode it with my favorite people in the world.

That’s the meaning of life.