What Is The Meaning Of Life?

This is the third and final unit of our Humanities course, called Journalism. In this unit, we learned about photography and how a photo can have a significant impact on the world. Our Field Experience included, visiting Roosevelt University and looking at an array of images with meaning. For this Action Project we had to take a photo and correlate it to the meaning of life. I chose my mom because I feel so has a gentle outlook on life.

(Kelly and SDC posing, 2018)

It is a huge question in today’s society; what is the meaning of life? We’ve all probably asked ourselves this time and time again. Although this can be a difficult question, it isn’t impossible to answer. Every single persons meaning of life can be different, in fact it should be. With as many people living in this world, it is certain there is no one right answer. This is just another example for how we as humans are all wired differently. Most people’s lives are lived based on their values and morals they have set as an individual. This can be influenced by their religion, family, age, upbringing, etc. The judgment of whether another person’s meaning of life is good or bad is entirely up to the person themself. Some may value certain things over others; which makes us unique. In the end it is all about your own true meaning of life and how you choose to portray it.


In discovering my own personal meaning of life, I decided to bring up the question to my mom. I asked her what the meaning of life is to her. Without much notice and barely any time to think she answered with, “It’s important to cherish your loved ones, because you never know when the last time you see them will be.” My mom is a loving, caring and passionate woman that has been someone I’ve looked up to since being a young kid. In school whenever we had to pick a superhero I would always pick my mom. The saying, “Your smile is contagious”, describes exactly her.

After asking for my mom’s definition of life was, I became more curious and intrigued as to how each individual is inspired by something to develop their own meaning of life. This can be influenced by things like religion, family tradition, upbringing, etc. When asking my mom for the reason why she chose this specific meaning she proceeded to give me a long list of reasons why. I then got a little bit more specific with the question and asked, “Why exactly do you think cherishing your loved ones is something you find to be the meaning of life?” She then responded with, “Well I think it probably had to do with the way I grew up, how my parents raised me, how they treated me and other people and being taught at a young age to always be kind and understanding.” I found this to be interesting because this is exactly what she tries to demonstrate and influence to my brother, Tyler and I. She then went on to tell me my grandma was all about family. She was always having people over at the house and cooking big dinners.

The image above portrays my mom, Kelly and I’s mother-daughter relationship. I would describe the relationship as close. We for the most part are open with each other about our lives. The photograph was taken on a Thursday afternoon in October, 2018 with an Apple Iphone 6s, while waiting for the Metra to arrive. I found the brick wall in the background to be interesting as it could symbolize time. Brick is usually known to be around for awhile and this can relate because my entire family is all about cherishing our loved ones. It has continued to pass down to each generation. Hugging for the camera shows our love and care for each other. As for the aperture, the light is shining directly on our faces. It helps focus the image on our similar smile. The rule of thirds played a pretty big piece in this image too because we were positioned in the center frame, making it so the image was solely about us. This photograph was subjective because it involves my mom’s feelings towards her family and the people she is closest to.