Happiness or Meaning

This is not a post about Heroes...this is a post about life. Keep reading, trust me!!!

I was watching Heroes last night. I wasn't a gigantic fan of the show until about three weeks ago. Before the season started I knew for sure that this show would land in my top 5. I am a big fan of super powers, heroes, and especially villains, but after the first three "chapters" I just wasn't getting into it. Because so many fans online continued to rave about it and because several of my spoiler sites swore that the best was yet to come I stuck with it.
Well I am glad that I did. The pay off came last week when H.R.G. got his very own special feature episode. It let me know that the creators do have a plan and that everything we've seen up until now has a reason. (Beyond season one, who knows, but at least the first season has a destination).
THE REAL STUFF
Anyway, I'm not here to discuss the actual show with you. I just wanted to give my two cents before I moved on to the real topic. Last night Nathan met up with the guy who is presumably behind most of what is going on. Linderman. While this Linderman is a real creep he had some insight on life that I think is incredibly accurate and amazingly real.

He said that life can only have two paths. You can either strive to live a life of happiness or you can strive to live a life of meaning, but you cannot have both. At first I disregarded the comment as a bunch of Heroes hooey. But then he elaborated and I really got what he was saying.
A life of happiness is a wonderful thing. You are contented. However, you live in he here and now. You can't look back into the past and you can't realistically anticipate the future. If you do either of those then you are not trully allowing yourself to be happy.
A life of meaning is alos a great thing. However, on this path you are not happy because in order to create some type of meaning and purpose you have to live in the past and see the realities of the future. You must understand pain and suffering and you must learn to change that so that the future is not so grim. So, a life of meaning and a life of happyness really can't co-exist.
I just thought that it was a neat insight and one that I completely believe. And I don't really look at it is as a negative outlook on life. Being a bit of a realist I think that it helps explain why so many people are unhappy. I think most folks attempt to take the path of happiness, but refuse to get out of the past or fail to quit looking at the future and they never can quite find that proper middle ground in the here and now.

Ok, just my two cents. Thought I'd throw it out there.

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