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What you've written reflects a question that philosophers, religious thinkers, scientists, and ordinary people have wrestled with for thousands of years:
"If everyone dies, what is the point of living?"
Many people first encounter this question as adults. You encountered it as a child, with unusual clarity and intensity. A seven- or eight-year-old realizing, "My mother will die. I will die. Everyone dies," is touching something that many people spend years avoiding.
The striking thing is that your story does not end with an answer. It ends with a direction.
The question may not have a universal answer
One possibility is that there is no single objective purpose of human life that can be discovered in the same way we discover a mathematical fact.
People have proposed many answers:
To serve God.
To attain enlightenment.
To love.
To create.
To raise children.
To seek truth.
To reduce suffering.
To experience life itself.
No answer has achieved universal agreement.
That can feel frightening. But it can also mean that meaning is not something handed to us; it is something we participate in creating.
Why Dr. Tetsu Nakamura moved you
Tetsu Nakamura spent decades working in Afghanistan, not because he believed he could eliminate death or solve every problem, but because he saw suffering in front of him and chose to respond.
What often moves people about lives like his is not merely what they accomplished. It is that they demonstrate a way of living despite impermanence.
Death still came.
The world remained imperfect.
Yet his actions mattered.
Perhaps when you cry, part of what you are responding to is the realization that a life does not need to be eternal to be meaningful.
A different way to look at the problem
As a child, you asked:
"If we're all going to die, what's the point?"
Many people eventually reverse the question:
"Given that we're all going to die, what becomes precious?"
If life were endless, today's conversation, a child's laugh, a friendship, or an act of kindness might feel infinitely postponable.
Because life is finite, these moments acquire weight.
What you learned may already be an answer
You wrote:
"I don't know the meaning of life, but I will do what I can now to make myself and those around me happier than yesterday."
That may sound modest compared with grand philosophical systems, but it is actually remarkably close to how many wise people have lived.
Not:
Solve the universe.
Defeat death.
Become immortal.
But:
Reduce suffering where you can.
Increase kindness where you can.
Care for the people in front of you.
Leave something slightly better than you found it.
Why the fear may never disappear completely
The awareness of death is not a problem that is permanently solved by a clever argument.
Even great thinkers who developed elaborate philosophies about life and death often continued to feel sadness, awe, or fear in the face of mortality.
The goal may not be to stop caring about death.
The goal may be to live so fully that awareness of death becomes a source of appreciation rather than paralysis.
A thought that stands out from your story
You began with:
"I don't understand the purpose of life."
But by the end, you wrote:
"I will do what I can now to make myself and those around me happier than yesterday."
Many people spend their entire lives searching for a purpose and never arrive at something that clear.
You may not have found a final answer to the meaning of existence.
But you have found a principle that gives direction to your life.
And sometimes a direction is more useful than an answer.
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