Cream of chicken is not the only soup or, is the idea that life has a meaning a hoax?

It's the end of the week and although I don't have a job, I'm tired so this will probably be either a short post or a long, rambling and nonsensical entry. I will try to keep it short.

Before I launch into the area of philosophy and what it has to say about the meaning of life (quite a lot I would imagine), I'd like to diverge today onto the subject of soup. Yesterday, I read a posting at Thoroughly Modern Medusa entitled just this: soup. The posting began: You know what's better than chicken soup on a bitterly cold day? Matzo Ball Soup. (And if you'd like to read a recipe for Matzo Ball Soup please click on this link.)

This got me thinking (as I've hinted before, if you have a job, you'd be amazed by how the unemployed mind works). There are some days when there is nothing in the world that one would want more than a big bowl of steaming soup and if asked, one might request, for example, cream of chicken. However, if cream of chicken was not available and instead we had to make do with our second favourite soup flavour, for arguments sake let's just say that that is tomato and basil, tomato and basil would probably do just as well. While I agree that tomato and basil has none of the particular poultry goodness of cream of chicken it is a tasty, nutritious and warm dish that might successfully be accompanied by bread and although initially we might have been put out to have been forced to choose what we consider second best, two hours later we'd probably feel just as good and healthy as if we'd eaten cream of chicken.

Add this to the fact that my favourite soup is pappa al pomodoro, which is a traditional Tuscan tomato and bread soup, but that I would rarely choose to eat this heavy dish during the summer months and the nugget of an idea starts to form. What I am getting at is that there is no one perfect soup. One particular soup might seem to be perfect in a given situation, or if we think about its choice and become involved in the act of choosing, but the simple fact is that if you like soup you probably enjoy eating more than one type of soup.

I'm starting to suspect that the meaning of life may be somewhat similar. Perhaps there is no single meaning of life, no template or playbook. The idea that we might search for meaning and conclude with one definitive answer is, let's face it, a big, fat, philosophical hoax.

Instead, I suspect that it might be more useful to think of meaningful life as being the genus, to which a variety of different, varied meanings belong. In other words, you may think that your life would be meaningful if you gave more to charity; met the man/woman of your dreams; became more spiritual; or worked as a doctor in A&E and saved car crash victims from an early grave. However, you may never achieve what it is that you think will infuse your life with meaning and yet that life may be purposeful and satisfying and good.

Which brings me neatly onto the subject of philosophy, which has attempted through varied cultural understandings to explore the meaning of life. It may take me quite some time to get a handle on what philosophy has to say about the meaning of life because human kind has attempted to provide an answer to the question: why are we here? since we were advanced enough to have that luxury, and we've chosen to discuss this from very different points of view throughout time and within diverse cultures.

I'm beginning to think that there is no meaning of life, only meanings, in the same way that there is not only cream of chicken soup, but many different flavours and consistencies of soup to be relished. It is with this in mind that I will venture onwards.