What Makes Life Meaningful

Meaningful life is essential to the ultimate success of any person in the world. However, the central question that lingers in the minds of many individuals when talking about life is always, what makes life meaningful? Different aspects such as relationships, imagination, love, and thinking have always been tipped the essential elements that make life more meaningful. However, love seems to stand out among all these elements in terms of making life meaningful among for individuals. Love in life begins from childhood and individuals are always yearning for it into adulthood. It begins with the care that parents give to individuals at childhood, to love relationships that lead to marriage, and to the old age love that sums it all. However, there could be arguments that love might not necessarily make life meaningful because it hurts especially when individuals breakup with their spouses. The best thing about love is that it is not limited in terms of its source. This is especially because it could be gained from multiple sources including parents, relatives, and friends hence making life more meaningful for individuals. This essay explicates the view that love is the most essential element that makes life meaningful because of its ability to improve problem-sharing, compassion, care, a sense of belonging, and overall happiness in life. 

People face different problems in their lives and have to share them to ensure they are solved effectively. As Warhol puts it, love makes life meaningful especially at puberty because it gives individuals the opportunity to share problems in the easiest manner possible. It is impossible for a person to share problems with others openly without love. Love gives individuals the courage to open up about their problems hence ensuring they share their problems in the most appropriate manner. Life becomes more meaningful as these problems are addressed by other people who love the person. For instance, an adolescent would find life more meaningful in instances where he/she is able to share problems with people who offer real love such as teachers, parents, and peers. Apart from adolescents, adults also have their own problems and they have to share with the people they love such as spouses or even parents. The instrumental role that love plays in the sharing and subsequent solution of these problems makes it efficient in making life more meaningful. These problems might not be fully solved, but the kind of love offered to a person ensures that he/she is able to remain strong in dealing with them. Love is a practical reliever of the numerous problems that individuals are likely to face in the course of their lives. It begets courage to deal with problems because of the assurance that some sense of support would be gained from loved ones in different quarters including relatives, friends, and parents. 

Compassion is an essential feeling in life, and is only build from love. Life only becomes meaningful in cases where individuals are able to extend their love to others by empathizing with them and feeling concerned about their different misfortunes or problems in life. Love makes life more meaningful because it breeds the inherent feeling of compassion toward the problems and misfortunes that others face in life. It is always easier to share in other peoples’ misfortunes and support them appropriately with the existence of love. Love makes individuals realize that misfortunes are conventional and should be shared in the course of trying to comfort others and make them have some hope for the future. The compassion shown out of loves makes individuals hopeful and they are always able to see life from a new perspective because of the emotional support gained from others. A typical example of events that calls for such compassion and love is incidences of death. The bereaved only get comforted in instances where those who love them are able to come around and grieve with them. They gain the strength to move on with their lives with the love they receive from their friends and other relatives. Without love, life would be meaningless because everyone would have been left to deal with such misfortunes without the support of others. In fact, more individuals would have given up with this life from the first instance they are faced with such events because they would not have received the desirable level of compassion to relieve them in their lives. Thus, the essence of love in making individuals empathize with others signifies its effectiveness in making life more meaningful. 

Human beings only feel complete in instances where they have a sense of belonging that comes through love. A sense of belonging means belonging to a particular family, peer group, or even a category within the society. The most interesting thing about love is that it makes life meaningful by satisfying the attachment needs of individuals. What would life look life without feeling accommodated or attached to a particular group? The obvious answer to this is that life would be meaningless in cases where individuals would not have been offered room to belong to a particular group of family. Individuals who feel rejected by their own families and friends do not always find life to be meaningful as such because they gradually become hopeless with the rejection they face. They are not able to talk to anyone because of this rejection. However, love gives meaning to their lives by ensuring they are accommodated to a particular group. One is only likely to feel a sense of belonging in cases where he/she is showered with adequate love by the group. It is not always automatic to be accommodated unconditionally by all groups within the society, but real loves makes it possible hence encouraging positive living within the society. Belonging to a group through love makes it easier for a person to be fully involved in the affairs of the society and every other thing that pertains to it. The high level of satisfaction gained from belonging to a group plays an instrumental role in the development of one in the society. Belonging to a group because of love is meaningful to a person’s life because it leads to more confidence and appreciation on the part of the individual. They are always able to wake up strongly and make decisions that matter in their own lives with the support of the groups they belong to in their lives. For instance, families support effective living among individuals through the love they offer while friends are quite motivational through their encouragement. Life becomes so meaningful with a sense of belonging gained through love. 

The care received from parents, relatives, and other friends is a product of love and it obviously makes life more interesting and meaningful among individuals. People would not care for each other in the absence of love. Again, life is meaningless in cases where there is no care. Love is essential in breeding the highest level of care beginning from childhood. With the love that parents have toward their children, they ensure they receive the best form of care through access to their basic needs such as food, clothing, and shelter. Children are able to grow in the most appropriate manner with the care that comes out of the love of their parents. Without care, children would not be in a position to realize their dreams in their future without maximum care and love from their parents. This does not stop from here as the individual gets into romantic relationships build on love. Again, maximum love in such relationships enhances the level of care and the responsibility of a person toward the upcoming family. Such relationships only stay over a long period in cases where the care is genuinely built out of love. In the old age, a person still has to receive care emanating out of love. The care that people receive in their old age is critical in ensuring they live for years and remain healthy in the course of their lives. The care given to individuals in their lives is critical in leading to some form of fulfillment and increased attainments in life. It is never easy to achieve the set targets without maximum love in the society. Overall, it is amazing how love sets the ground for care from an early age in life. It is this care that keeps individuals going in their lives. It makes life fully enjoyable and meaningful for individuals hence leading to increased success and responsibility as individuals try to give back this care. 

Love is the source of motivation for progress in different aspects of life such as academics and work life. The love of relatives, workmates, and other individuals within the society plays a key role in motivating individuals toward the attainment of their different goals within the society. Individuals seem to be demotivated in cases where they feel they are not receiving maximum love and appreciation for their efforts. Nevertheless, a little love for the minimum achievements made by individuals in areas such as academics and work life is always helpful in motivating them to more achievements. For students, the most important thing is to receive love from their teachers, peers, and parents for them to gain the highest level of motivation to succeed in their academic work. Otherwise, they would lose the desire to achieve in their lives because of the lack of love. In a similar sense, those working in different job sectors feel motivated to wake up the next day because of the love they gain the course of their lives. The motivation gained is instrumental in perfecting life because it ensures that all the targets that have been set are achieved in the best ways possible. 

More so, love is the source of all happiness and this means that it makes life meaningful. The question here is, who does not want to be happy in this life? It is automatic that everyone would want to be happy with his/her family, friends, and all other individuals in the society. Love is the key to all the happiness that individuals are able to encounter in their lives. For instance, love is the only best way to build a happy family and ensure that everyone is supported in the best way possible. Love begets happiness by ensuring that all sorts of conflicts that might arise in the family structure are handled appropriately. In fact, the love from a spouse and children makes life more meaningful to the person because it leads to the realization that other people value them in the society. Self-confidence and the determination to face each new day are always improved with the happiness founded in the family structure. More so, a person is able to be happy while interacting with other people in life through social relationships. The love from friends makes life highly meaningful and worthy of living with the highest levels of happiness. Happiness ensures that a person does not feel alone in life because of the connections received through family and friends. 

On other hand, not everyone could agree with the view that love makes life more meaningful. Opponents to this view might assert that love does not make life meaningful because it is the source of many problems that many individuals face in their lives. For instance, opponents argue that forms of love found in situations such as romantic relationships have contributed to some of the most undesirable happenings among individuals. They perceive love to be poison especially when one is betrayed by his/her most loved spouse. This form of love makes life extremely meaningless and could lead individuals to the commit suicide. Suicidal feelings emanating from love signify its limited meaning in the lives of individuals. A meaningful thing in life is supposed to add value rather than lead to such feelings of unworthiness and potential suicide. If love were to make life meaningful, it would not lead to betrayal in relationships and the unfortunate feelings of committing suicide. Opponents are of the view that love should not be taken as an element that contributes to meaningful life because of the pain it brings to individuals when it is breached by the other party to it. The pain is always massive to bear and makes it more difficult for person to move on with life in the required manner. Individuals tend to be stuck at one point in cases where their love is betrayed. There is always a struggle to move on with the rest of life because of the negative feelings emanating from love. Therefore, it is impossible to say love is leads to meaningful life in the views of opponents because of the role it plays in contributing to the loss of essence about life on the part of other people around the world. 

Additionally, opponents argue that love does not make life meaningful because it tends to build some form of parasitic and unrealistic relationships among individuals. Many people tend to hide in love to develop relationships with other people for their own selfish interests. Most of these relationships are always parasitic, as they are anchored on the pretense of real love among individuals. Love does not bring any form of meaning to life especially if it leads an individual to relationships where they are supposed to give more than they receive. For instance, the love for other people would lead to massive sharing of resources with these individuals even in cases where they are not committed. Some of them are only in love and friendship in cases where the other person is able. Otherwise, they run away when there are no resources to look up to. Love cannot be said to be meaningful to the lives of individuals because it is the source of such meaningless relationships and associations among individuals. The best way to bring meaning to life is to write love out of it because it is never genuine in most instances, as it sets the ground for pretense among people. Losses in life are incurred because of the false nature of the love that individuals are supposed to live with the presence of love in their lives. According to opponents, it is unrealistic to consider love part of the life that individuals live because it kills the hope to face another day. 

In conclusion, love is one of the most important things that individuals could experience in their lives. Love is something that grows gradually and it is highly meaningful to the lives of individuals. It is a high time that individuals looked at love from another perspective given that it begins from childhood. The care that people receive from their childhood is brought about by love and it sets the stage for their success in life. This signifies the significance of love in the lives of individuals. The motivation to succeed brought about by love is also vital in promoting success and the attainment of goals in the lives of individuals. People would not achieve what they need in their lives without any form of love from their family and even friends. It basically makes individuals feel appreciated and supported in whatever they do in their lives. Everyone wants to be happy in life, and love is the source of this happiness. For one to be happy, he needs the love of others through belonging and accommodation no matter what. Problems are only shared when one feels loved and appreciated by all other people in the most appropriate manner. As much as opponents state that love is the source of all problems for human life, it remains the most important thing in life. The few limitations that come with love should not be taken as the full failure of love in terms of making life more meaningful. Love should always be taken as one of the best things that ever happened to human life and should be utilized for personal prosperity within the society.