“(The river) still resounded, full of suffering, searching, but other voices joined it, voices of joy and of suffering, good and bad voices, laughing and sad ones, a hundred voices, a thousand voices.”

In the novel Siddhartha, by Hermann Hesse, there can be seen a central theme of searching for the meaning of life. Throughout the novel the main character, Siddhartha, tries to find everlasting peace through many different methods, whilst battling the challenges of life. You might notice that the central theme is the meaning of life, but Siddhartha is searching for eternal peace. Keep reading and I’ll explain why.

Even after searching for most of his life, Siddhartha’s final push to enlightenment comes when he discovers he has a son, whose mother is now dead, that he must take care of. Despite all his patience with the child his son runs away, an event that sinks Siddhartha into a deep despair. This despair drives Siddhartha again to the river, but this time to learn from the river. In his darkest moment of pain he turns to the river and finds Om, the meaning of life.

And now our central theme, the reason I wrote this whole post, the meaning of life: the experience of living. Our pain, sorrow, joy, laughter, and the way we interact with another. I like to think of it as a symphony of emotion, each of the sounds bleeding into each other, creating an orchestra of what Siddhartha understands to be Om.

I know that sometimes that symphony sounds more like a cacophony, but like an elementary school orchestra, each note, whether wrong our right, holds our efforts, fears, triumphs, and the fullness of life. If you listen closely, maybe those wrong notes are really the sound of another tune, bleeding into yours, waiting for you to be ready to listen to new music. And music is meant to be danced to.

Follow the river of sound, and dance to the symphony, whether its a waltz, jig, or just the dance of tears as they fall down your face. This is what life is, and hopefully as we go along we’ll grow, learning to recognize when a new tune calls us forward, and becoming expert dancers.