If Everything Is Temporary, What Makes Life Meaningful?

8 Uncomfortable Questions Modern Life Asks Ancient Wisdom: Day 8

Everything changes. Yet we live as if the next achievement will finally make us secure.

We build careers, collect possessions and try to keep people close. Then life reminds us that bodies age, roles change, companies fail and even our strongest emotions pass.

If nothing stays, why build anything? Why love anyone when loss is part of the agreement?

Perhaps we are asking the wrong question. Instead of “What can I make permanent?” ask, “What is this temporary life shaping within me?”

Something does not need to last forever to matter. A meal ends, but it nourishes. A conversation ends, but it can change a decision. A life ends, but its kindness can continue in others.

Impermanence does not remove meaning. It removes our excuse to postpone it.

What remains after the moment passes?

Jain philosophy gives a powerful answer. The outside event may pass, but the way we meet it leaves a mark on the soul.

Karma is not merely a reward and punishment system. It is the residue created by intention and action. Anger, greed and dishonesty strengthen patterns within us. Restraint, truth and compassion loosen them.

The deeper question is not, “What did I get?” but “What did I become while getting it?”

Ahimsa is not limited to avoiding physical violence. A cutting sentence, silent manipulation, careless consumption and cruelty towards ourselves also create harm. A meaningful life reduces harm, including the harm nobody applauds us for preventing.

Moksha is freedom of the soul from karmic bondage. It may feel distant, yet it can guide an ordinary Tuesday. Does this choice trap me further in anger, fear, greed and ego, or make me slightly freer?

Purification of the soul is not about looking pure. It is about needing less pretence.

Bahubali won, but was still not free

In the Jain story of Bahubali, he defeats his brother Bharata, renounces his kingdom and stands in deep meditation. Even then, subtle pride remains. He struggles with the thought of bowing before monks younger than him.

His last obstacle was the part of him that still needed to feel above someone.

The story exposes a modern truth. We can leave a job and still carry its status. We can donate possessions and feel superior for being generous. We can speak about detachment while needing admiration for being spiritual.

Bahubali’s real conquest begins when the inner “elephant” of pride is recognised. His meaning lies not in what he won, but in what he released.

Meaning is participation, not possession

Dharma asks us to act according to what is right and to our deeper nature. It does not promise that the result will belong to us. A teacher may never know which sentence changed a student. A founder may build something valuable that later takes another form. The action still matters if it was sincere and responsible.

The Gita does not ask Arjuna to guarantee the outcome. It asks him to see clearly, understand his duty and act without making the result his identity. That is full effort without inner slavery.

Lila, often understood as divine play, adds something we forget. Life is not only a test to pass or a problem to solve. We are here to create, learn, serve, laugh and love. Nobody calls music meaningless because its final note becomes silent.

Moksha is not rejection of life. It is freedom from being owned by it.

My own lesson in impermanence

I have moved between identities. I was a cancer researcher for almost nine years. I came from India to the UK for an MBA, completed it with distinction and stood first in my cohort. Later, I began building work in mental health and wellbeing. Each identity mattered, but none protected me from grief or uncertainty.

Losing my father taught me this more deeply than any book. After loss, it is rarely the grand milestones that return. It is the familiar voice and the small ways someone made life feel held. The moments were temporary, but the relationship changed me.

I learned that achievement and meaning are not the same. Achievement can be displayed. Meaning is often invisible. It may be asking for help when pride wants silence, creating something useful from pain, or refusing to pass your hurt to another person.

Meaning is not found once. It is practised through repeated choices.

What current research is beginning to measure

The Global Flourishing Study is following more than 200,000 people across 22 countries. It studies health, meaning and purpose, character, relationships and financial security together, rather than treating a good life as only happiness or income.

Its design tells us something important. Money, health and happiness matter. But no single score can hold a whole human life. Flourishing is multidimensional.

The mistake is asking success to do the work of purpose, belonging and inner freedom.

Four questions of meaning

When life feels busy or empty, these four questions help more than “Am I successful?”

1. Dharma: Is this truly mine to do?
Am I following my values and nature, or someone else’s definition of a good life?

2. Ahimsa: What happens to harm?
Will this choice make another person, the planet or my mind less wounded? Ahimsa includes boundaries. Allowing repeated harm is not compassion.

3. Karma: What am I rehearsing?
Every choice trains an inner habit. Am I practising courage or avoidance, generosity or greed, truth or image management?

4. Moksha: Can I release the result?
Can I give sincere effort without making praise, control or success the price of my peace?

These questions do not make every decision easy. They move meaning from a grand mission into daily conduct.

Samvatsari: a return, not an ending

Samvatsari is a fitting close to these eight days. It asks where we caused hurt, what we still carry and what needs purification within us.

For thousands of years, we have changed the objects of our attachment without necessarily changing attachment itself.

Once it was kingdom. Now it might be valuation.

Once it was reputation in the village. Now it is followers.

Once distraction came from the marketplace. Now it lives in our pocket.

Once Arjuna froze on a battlefield because he could not reconcile duty, identity, attachment and consequence. Now our battlefield looks different.

The human operating system has not changed nearly as much as the technology running around it.

That is why Samvatsari still matters. Micchami Dukkadam is not a yearly sentence that erases everything. It is an invitation to notice the harm we caused knowingly or unknowingly, ask forgiveness sincerely and change the pattern that produced it. Otherwise apology becomes another ritual that protects the ego.

Everything is temporary, including this year, this body, this success, this pain and this version of us. Yet each temporary moment gives us a permanent question:

Did I use it to tighten my attachments, or to free my soul?

Perhaps life is meaningful not because we can keep it, but because while it is here, we can choose what we are becoming.

References

• Global Flourishing Study, overview and Wave I collection, 2025-2026: https://globalflourishingstudy.com/overview and https://www.nature.com/collections/eaeicjffaf

FAQs