A man who spent the early years of the first half of his life searching for answers to the meaning of life finally reached the place where he was told he would find it. At the proverbial mountain top he at last faced the old man - with thick white hair down to his waist and a beard and mustache to match - sitting cross-legged on a granite seat; nearby was a walking stick and a stack of parchment on a flat slab of white stone and a quill pen.
Old Man: What is it you seek, young man?
Young Man: I am looking for the meaning of life. I also want to know my place in the universe.
Old Man: I have four words for you. From them you will find your answers.
Young Man: How do I get my answers from four words?
Old Man: The four words are: Small World, Big World. I will say no more. You may leave now.
Did the young man understand what he was told? Did he find his answers? What did the old man really mean? Do we speculate or we throw in our best guesses?
That young man lived close to a hundred years old when he died. We cannot really know for sure because lack of a birth record could not confirm the exact date of his birth. At his home, which is now a heritage place in a village where he grew up, spent his childhood, and later from which he began his journey, then back to start his own family, was where he kept a detailed record of his life.
His children and grandchildren preserved and maintained the upkeep of the humble home, open to people from all over the world who come to visit and pay homage. Inside the home was a small bedroom and just outside of it were two tables. On one table, encased in a glass top, is a thick book of bound yellowed parchment, an inkwell and pen next to it. On the other table was another hard-bound book of modern paper. A reading lamp was next to the book and a simple though comfortable chair with no armrest fronts the table.
The old manuscript under glass is not for public perusal; however, visitors may read the book with the modern pages - an exact copy of the old book - and they can take pictures of the pages but they may do so only without moving the entire book to another spot in the room.
By the entrance door is a larger table. On it are neatly arranged decks of 8-1/2 by 11 bond paper with one side printed on. It is a one-page summary written by the man who authored the book. Visitors may take a copy.
It read:
To Each One and All, Greetings!
I know that not all of you who come will have the time to read my entire book. I wrote this summary for you to read here or take home with you. I hope it will serve you well and please share with your friends what you have experienced here.
I must tell you that I found the answer to my quest for the meaning of life and where my place is in the universe almost immediately. Half way down the mountain on my descent after I left the old man, I stopped to rest on a rock under a small tree. Then I noticed along a cliff, an eagle feeding a newly hatched chick. It must have just hatched because next to it was one still unhatched egg.
To the eagle chick the nest was its small world. It will be for the next few weeks. One with an even smaller world is the egg next to it. Then it dawned on me that not too long earlier, both eggs came from something even smaller - smaller than even a tenth of a grain of rice - deep in the mother eagle's oviduct.
Small world indeed. I knew. I pondered, I too was in a small watery world in my mother's womb for nine months.
My thoughts then were that in a matter of a few weeks, the eagle chicks will leave the nest. They will soar high above over a world a million times, more perhaps, than the small world that was their nest. Then I thought of the hummingbird. For one so tiny to begin its life from such a small world of a nest the size of a teaspoon to a swath of several thousand square kilometers it must cover during several migratory trips, its small world and the big world it must fly to and back explained to me my place in the universe.
The meaning of life is how I lived it throughout its entirety. It was about what meaning I managed to add to it that became the answer. A big world is what we make from a small world where we began. Our place in the universe is never larger than the footprint we occupy. Hubris is mistakenly believing that our footprints leave a deeper impression than everyone else's. Humility is acknowledging that our place in the universe is the small world from where we started and where we will end.
I began my life in a small world. Restlessly I went to see a bigger world. I doubled that world when I met my wife, then increased it to several fold with our children and grandchildren. Alas, when my wife passed away, the big world shrunk back to where it was. As I was finishing the last few pages of the entire manuscript, I was back in the confines of a small world. My failing vision can hardly make out the four walls of my bedroom. I know that what remains of my time in this world will be hours of the day spent in my bed.
We may stay in one place or travel far and wide but we must always remember that each one of us gets an equal amount of time that comes and goes at the rate of one second per second whether we use it or not.
Do not fall into despair, my dear visitor. I had lived. I had put meaning to that life as best as I could. I know my place in the universe. I respected everything and everyone that is in it. I gave, I helped and I did the right thing at every turn as best as possible, regardless of whether I got anything back. I saw to it that I was grateful for everything that was good that happened to me.
From this one page that is the summary of my life, I urge you to read between the lines. Find as many lines as you can because it is from those that the answers you are seeking will come. You have a place in the universe. It is what you make of your small world that matters. The big world is where every living thing dares to seek and make the most of what it finds. Be sure to find yours but, most of all, make the most of the time you spend here and there.
Farewell, my dear friend.
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