Open Essay: “The Meaning of Life”
	The dust rose steadily in the air, swirling on the occasional eddy of the gentle breeze that blew across the canyon, out over the 1,000-foot drop. The sun was lifting into the sky slowly, over halfway to its zenith, casting shadows upon the jagged rocks and wiry trees that were sprawled across the landscape as if some giant had just dropped them there. Rising and falling in pitch, the engines of the two Jeeps broke the silence of the hills, rumbling along down the path narrow enough for only one at a time, and even then at times it seemed they would barely fit.
	I took a deep breath, feeling the air of Moab expand in my lungs as I stared across the expanse that was Negro Bill’s Canyon. My high-contrast glasses with their bright yellow lenses and chrome-colored carbon frame sat loosely on my face, deepening the shadows and paling the highlights of the terrain along the Porcupine Rim trail. Thoughts wandered to and fro in my mind as we crawled along like lumbering bears, my left arm propped in the window, the hand resting on and controlling the steering wheel, my right hand worked without thought on the hand throttle bolted to the stick shift on the median between the two front seats. My left foot occasionally touched the clutch to ease up on the torque on the axles, as my right foot shared the responsibility of feeding gas slowly to the engine along with my right hand. Machine and man were almost as one, rolling over the pale red sandstone and rocks that were gray flecked with white and black that were in our path. As the Jeep Wrangler a good twenty-five feet in front of us slowed to a stop in front of a series of stone “steps,” rocks layered in a pattern reminiscent of steep and jagged stairs that could have been built by an artistic madman trying to reach the path four feet above, I gently eased the hand throttle down to the closed position and pressed on the clutch and brake simultaneously. The thirty-three inch tires rolled to a stop as the passenger sitting in the beige bucket seat to my right, my father, and I engaged in a few brief words about how warm and nice the day was for getting out in nature.
	Richard Nelson was a large man with dark graying hair, standing 6'3" as he stepped onto the trail to examine the obstacle, and  probably a good 275 pounds. He had been my scoutmaster as a teenager, and a good one at that; this was the man who had introduced me to Phantom of the Opera and the joys of Mountain Dew. Now he and his wife Marsha, who was sitting in the passenger seat of their dark red vehicle, would come on Jeeping excursions with my Dad and me to Moab from time to time.  We had our trips down to almost rituals, habits ranging from which motel we stayed in to where we had breakfast, filled up with gas, and bought groceries.
	Without warning, the Jeep in front of us suddenly lurched and began to roll backwards. My eyes quickly darted from Richard to the Wrangler to the northern side of the trail, where the mountain suddenly dropped to the bottom of the canyon, separated only by small outcroppings that ranged from one to three feet in length that were spaced haphazardly down the steep incline. It was a sickening plunge that brought a lump in your throat if a breeze hit you in your back while you were standing too close to the edge. I could see Marsha struggling to reach for a brake and unfasten her seatbelt at the same time, while her husband futilely clutched at the door and yelled her name, and, “Stop!” The wheels were turned to the left, causing the Jeep to gradually arch in its path toward the drop.
	Gassing the engine, I lurched the Wrangler I was piloting towards the other Jeep. My first instinct was to connect bumpers and stop the other machine and it’s occupant from doing a backwards somersault plummet to the sandy bottom, but I distantly heard my Dad sternly say, “Stop son, no!” as if the sound were traveling through water. I slowed the Jeep back to a stop as I helplessly watched the other red Wrangler’s back wheels slip over the edge. I could no longer see where Marsha was, as Richard grasped the front bumper of this vehicle that must have weighed close to half a ton if not more, his feet sliding on the dust and rocks as he tried holding it back. The front end slowly pointed skyward as it slid until the front wheels were balanced on the edge. And then a miracle happened. It stopped.
	I heard Richard call to me, “Let’s get her out of there! Quick, bring the chains and let’s tow her out!” Once again, I brought the quiet idle of the engine into a roar and sped to where he stood with his knuckles and face white, sweat streaming down his face with the strain. My father leapt out the door on his side fo the vehicle and ran to the back where he popped open the window on its hydraulic arms and swung open the tailgate, grabbing the chains and hooking them snugly to our rear chassis, then connecting them to the front bumper of the stranded Jeep. I heard the voice of my father say to me, “Now go slowly. We’re going to ease it up.” As I performed a quick check in the mirrors and looked at the small room I had to work with in front of me, a sudden thought crossed my mind. If that Jeep slips, one of two things will happen: the steel chains will break and Marsha will be lost. . .or I’m going down with her and the rest of it all.
	I had been faced with life and death situations before, and even after my mind had caught on that thought, I remember that my nerves were cold and focused, and I never truly believed for one second that any of us, including our family friend and neighbor, were going to die that day. However, the experience did make me stop and take a step back in my views of everything as a whole. Once again I pondered that great question that man has been pondering since there was a man to ponder it: What is the meaning of life?
	Authors, poets, theologians, philosophers, artists and musicians have all tried to express it in different ways, to come up with one solid answer to comfort the human mind. We all feel like we are someone important, that we all have a purpose in this life. Some people believe that everyone as an individual has their own reason for existence and that there is no other purpose. Others believe that we are collectively a part of a single fate, and that nothing we do can change that, while other groups may believe variances. Atheists consider religion in general to be the product of simple minds trying to grasp the meaning of their own place in the universe or grand design. Whether you consider yourself to be religious, an enlightened thinker, or what your take on a larger plan may be, I believe that I have settled upon what I personally feel to be the answer to the meaning of life. So simple, so direct, that any mind can comprehend the reasoning. As we go about our day-to-day lives, we have only one purpose: To be happy.
	Now, stop and think about that for a minute. Is there anything in this life that we don’t do to ultimately try and satisfy ourselves or make ourselves, or others, happy? We may not like going to work, but we do it so that we can live a more comfortable lifestyle at home. Perhaps school is tedious at times, but we do that also to improve our quality of life and to expand our minds. Developing relationships on different levels, from acquaintances to sharing your entire life with another person, is all about finding joy through love.
	The opposite of being happy could be said to be sadness or depression. Often times we see the effects of these emotions in people’s lives. Also often, much to often, we see the termination of life because an individual became overly depressed, resulting in a loss of purpose. Reaching out for an escape, reaching to be happy again, many mistake the ending of all sensation for that of peace. Indeed, depression seems to be the direct opposite of what happiness is, a form of emotional destruction which contradicts life.
	This is not a new philosophy; it is almost as old as the question itself, perhaps older if it is the real purpose after all. There have been countless variations to complicate the baseness of it, to try and add meaning to the simplicity that is there, almost corrupting it in the process in some cases. These theories or philosophies range from an anarchist approach, where anything we say or do is correct and justified because it is all with the intent to gratify our own selves, to the over-complex who add meanings or try to redefine the emotion of happiness itself.
	I stood at the rear of my father’s fire engine-red Jeep Wrangler, the large shocks that raised it three inches more than normal and beefy tires for almost any terrain causing the roof of the sandy beige-colored hard-shell top to tower over even my six-foot one-inch height. The Hi-8 video camera was lightweight and warm in my hand as I pressed my right eye to the dark eyepiece and filmed as the massive dual winch of the tow truck anchored firmly against the side of the hill pulled easily on the Jeep stuck over the side of the mountain, dragging it from its perch on the ledge. The chains that we had used to anchor the two vehicles to one another sat in a heap on the ground. After pulling for a few moments and getting the front left tire wedged onto a tree to secure the Jeep, we had attached some other cables to keep it in place, called the towing company with a cellular phone, and managed to get Marsha out. More than an hour had passed since the event had initially taken place. I lowered the camera and I leaned up against the back of “Nellie Bell” (as my Dad has christened his four-wheel drive vehicle), I looked at Richard and Marsha, both watching emotionless but visibly shaken. I turned my attention to the bottom of the canyon again. I bit my lower lip as I recalled how the tow truck driver had scratched his head and confirmed that I had a fifty-fifty chance of survival trying to tow the other Jeep back up without the proper anchors or a winch. Then I laughed to myself. I was in Moab, which makes me happy. I was with friends and my father, which makes me happy. And I was alive and with a purpose, which makes me very, very happy.