"42"

 
 
In the book "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams, an enormous supercomputer took 7.5 million years to calculate the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.  The puzzling answer was "42"! 

If you ask your friends, your family members, your colleagues or even a passer-by on the street, the answer to this "ultimate question" can be highly variable. Some may say the answer lies in having lots of money, diamonds, Ferraris, Patek Philippes, big bungalows and such.  Some will swear it's to eat, drink and be merry. Some find the answer in God or religion.  The social types will list world peace, democracy, equality and freedom from poverty and hunger as their ultimate answers.  Yet others of a New Age temperament may cite contentment, inner peace and self-fulfilment.

The curious thing is that few people will ask themselves what the question was that they were answering. What actually is this "Ultimate Question".  Granted that the answer was "42", Douglas Adams himself wondered what was the question and in his book, a planet-sized computer using organic components was set up to find this elusive "Ultimate Question".  He named this computer "Earth"!

Implicitly, Adams seems to be telling us that earthly life and human existence are all about the search for meaning. It is to make sense of our finite life-span and our short appearance in this whole vastness of space and time. In short, the "ultimate question" is about what's the most important thing in existence. So, after a hundred thousand years, are we closer to uncovering the "ultimate question"?

What's the meaning of life and existence?  How should we live? Is trusting God all we need to do?  Is life a process of perfecting humanity.  Is love the unifying force of the Universe?

Whatever the question, if the answer to it is still "42", it implies that the Universe is an indifferent place with no clear meaning.  If we are string theory physicists, we may conjecture that our Universe is merely Universe No. 42 in a sea of parallel universes, each not aware of the existence of all the others.  In such infinite vastness, it seems silly to even think about such small questions of our life, our own universe and our everything.

Perhaps, all our philosophers, thinkers and spiritualists should drop all delusions of grandeur and return to the position of the existentialist; that of inventing meaning for each of our lives in our own way, however small and insignificant.