3 in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.4 I tell you this so that no one may deceive you by fine-sounding arguments.5 For though I am absent from you in body, I am present with you in spirit and delight to see how disciplined you are and how firm your faith in Christ is.
[Deuteronomy 8-10 New International Version (NIV)]
8 Be careful to follow every command I am giving you today, so that you may live and increase and may enter and possess the land the Lord promised on oath to your ancestors.2 Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands.3 He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.4 Your clothes did not wear out and your feet did not swell during these forty years.5 Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so the Lord your God disciplines you.
Life is a learning process and the school of hard knocks is a great teacher. Pleasure and comfort don't build character -- adversity does! Once you acquire your Masters in Adversity, you will be prepared for the worst of situations.
No one knows how long they have to live, but sadly, we can be sure of one thing: we'll waste far too much of life. Waste it sitting around, waste it chasing the wrong things, waste it by refusing to take the time to ask ourselves what's actually important to us.
In the same vein, having the absolute understanding of life - if there ever be one - would undoubtedly make life less enjoyable. Richard Bach in Illusions wrote, "Learn what the magician knows and it's not magic anymore." Not to mention that desperately contemplating the meaning of life can lead to stress, ulcers, high blood pressure, and a lack of success. At the extreme, people frantically searching for the meaning of life have been know to commit suicide.
Evenif you discover the absolute meaning of life, you may realize that it doesn't really make any difference to the quality of your existence anyway. Your answer may be that ultimately life is pretty meaningless, that we are all insignificant grains of dust in the grand cosmic scheme of things, that we are all leading random lives, that our existence doesn't affect anything or anyone.
