By Amrit Ratna Tuladhar  Human life is both a gift and an ordeal. It is full of magnificent moments, memories, and experiences against the dark background of pain, suffering, and the dread of uncertainty and death. The uncertainties and ambiguities of life may result in existential angst.    The experiences throughout life, accompanied by constant comparisons and differences between the opposites and choices, create the permanent discontent and nagging feeling that something is missing in life. At the end of life, after enduring through the endless series of changes, one is left with the understanding that there is no definitive answer to the absurdity of life. In this human drama, individuals are actors looking either for a role, or the original author, or for the primary source of it all.    The perception of life is greatly influenced by the unknowability of death, which catalyzes the quest for self-reflection and meaning. The longing for immortality is the human reaction to the dread of non-existence. But what would be the meaning of endless life? It is hard enough to endure reality with all the uncertainty during the relatively short duration of life. With immortality, the persistent unknowability of the ultimate reality and the tedium of life would become unbearable. But the desire for immortality is so great that human beliefs and aspirations have been shaped by it.    Another human dilemma relates to the question of what constitutes the good life and how to achieve it. An important aspect of this question is whether the good life can be based on various illusions, or whether it is better achieved through the search for the truth about the nature of the universe. It is easier to adapt illusions to individual desires and needs, unlike the reality that is indifferent to the human condition. But then, what is the use of escape from reality through illusions? Life becomes a farce, full of pretence.   The search for the truth about reality, on the other hand, provides some meaning to life. The struggle to transcend the unknown elevates humans somewhat above their origins. The concept of the good life is difficult to define or measure, as each person has their own way of perceiving what is important or valuable in life. The perception and interpretation of the good life depend on a variety of individual traits and views, as well as personal circumstances, culture, religion, experience, and knowledge. For some, the good life is meeting basic survival needs, or the absence of pain and suffering, or achieving comfort through the acquisition of wealth.   For the others, it is life without sin according to religious principles or striving for an accurate description of reality according to science. In addition to an individual notion of the good life, there is also a shared vision of the good life related to the aspirations for a just society. Ultimately, nothing is ever good enough, as the desires are endless. From basic needs of life to pursuing greater comfort, the quest for the good life never ends, and it is constantly changing. But there are things that can never be achieved; all that can be realized is always partial and temporary.   Human life is a collection of random moments, memories, thoughts, choices, experiences, and biased interpretations. Some of these moments in life are perceived as good. Then there are past experiences and decisions that can influence one’s perception of the “good life”. Life must be viewed in its entirety, but it is composed of fragments of events and memories that are collected in the mind, where, like in an abstract composition, the picture of life is formed by a series of good and bad moments. The world is not conducive to the good life, as recurring difficult situations such as illness or financial problems often interfere with it. One cannot possibly implement all the perceived attributes of the good life.    Achieving the good life involves episodes of its partial realization interrupted by random problems, followed by the continuous strive to recover the good life. Everything is in continuous flux. There is always something or someone that can disrupt one’s life. But nevertheless, there are in life various “good moments” that linger in the mind with recurring recall. If such moments occupy much of the human conscious awareness, they can give an illusion of wellness beyond individual moments. Art is a creative effort to capture reality and to find its meaning through the illusions of literature, visual arts, and music. Art, like any other illusion, provides consolation for the boredom and adversities of life. It is an effort to both create and escape reality.    The paradox is that art distorts reality in order to reveal its essence. The distortion of life by art may cause confusion, as one tends to compare one’s existence with those in the fictional settings of books or films. If one does not recognize them as illusions, one may become dissatisfied with life. The illusory drama will always remain fiction, unlike the unscripted life governed by chance. Literature, visual arts, and music are symbolic representations of reality, like imagination and thought. However, there is a tendency to confuse those mental realities with physical realities and treat them as if they were real. Thus, a great deal of human effort is directed at dealing with the tension between illusions and realities of life. Art stretches the boundaries of the human imagination and the perception of reality. Fiction is filled with metaphors, allegories and symbolism, which are illusions that assign meaning to human reality. Art does not just imitate life; it gets entangled with life and, by creating meaning through illusions and imagination, distorts its reality.    Conclusion   Humans seek certainty, meaning, knowledge, and the good life in an uncertain world, in which a massive asteroid colliding with the Earth could extinguish humanity. But nature is what it is, irrespective of any meaning or interpretation attached to it by the human mind. Nature is neither moral nor immoral; it is indifferent to human concepts and desires. The world is constantly changing, and human life is a continuous chain of intertwined random events and is thus largely unpredictable. Striving to reconcile the seeming absurdity of human existence with the desire to find meaning and purpose in life, it is hard to distinguish between illusion and reality.   Although it seems that the laws of nature and the universe are suitable for the emergence of life, cosmic evolution appears indifferent to human survival. Thus, one may inquire whether there is any inherent meaning or purpose to the universe and human life, or whether the emergence of life and human intelligence is nothing more than an evolutionary accident. The possibility of human extinction is real; it would imply the ultimate futility of human efforts in describing reality. All scientific and technological knowledge, literary and musical compositions, and philosophical explanations could disappear in the abyss of nothingness. All the effort to touch reality would be gone in vain, and humanity would be extinguished by the same random chance operating in the universe that caused life in the first place. Such a world hardly makes any sense from a human perspective. But maybe there is a deeper truth about reality and life. One may never know.    <losthorizon@mail.com.np>