Meaning of life

I brist på egen kreativitet - för närvarande - kommer ytterligare ett citat här på bloggen.
En riktigt tolvtaggare, om ni frågar mig.

Take, as an image of good life, a jazz group. A jazz group which is improvising differs from a symphony-orchestra, since to a large extent each member is free to express herself as she likes. But she does so with a receptive sensitivity to self-expressive performances of the other musicians. The complex harmony they fashion comes not from playing from a collective score, but from the free musical expression of each member acting as the basis for the free expression of the others. As each player grows more musically eloquent, the others draw inspiration  from this and are spurred to greater heights. There is no conflict here between freedom and the ´good of the whole´, yet the image is the reverse of totalitarian. Though each performer contributes to ´the greater good of the whole´, she does so not by some grime-lipped self-sacrifice  but simply by expressing herself. There is self-realization, but only through a loss of self in the music as a whole. There is achievement, but it is not a question of self-aggrandizing success. Instead, the achievement - the music itself - acts as a medium of relationship among the performers. There is pleasure to be reaped from this artistry, and - since there is free fulfillment or realization  of powers - there is also happiness in the sense of flourishing. Because this flourishing is reciprocal, we can even speak, remotely and analogically, of a kind of love. One can do worse, surely, than propose such a situation as a meaning of life - both in the sense that is what makes life meaningful, and - more controversially - in the sense that when we act in this way, we realize our natures at their finest.

Terry Eagelton - The meaning of life. (2007)