Middle Class Meanings of Life

I live in a 3 bedroom house, have 1.5 children, 2 cars in the driveway, 3 cats on my couch, and lots of debtors stuffing my mailbox and calling me on the telephone. I ’m middle class, I think.

Wikipedia says that roughly 53% of Americans are members of the working middle class.

“Middle class persons commonly have a comfortable standard of living, significant economic security, considerable work autonomy and rely on their expertise to sustain themselves,” Author Gilbert Dennis said this in 1998.

Fifteen years and a deep recession later, some of us may disagree with that definition. Economics and social factors were a bit shakier in 2012 than in 1998. But one thing the middle class has is a great advantage on all the other classes in the search for the meaning of life. What am I here for? Why am I doing this?

You might be middle class is you are taking any of these roads to finding your purpose:

1. Look for your higher self in the bathtub

“In the words of Deepak Chopra, our purpose in being here, in life, is to discover our higher self”…So instead of going outside the home to find a spiritual oasis, consider your bathtub. It’s practical in a few ways. One, almost every house or apartment …has one. If you find yourself in place where you don’t have a bathtub? Showers work well also for most uses. Two, it lends itself to spiritual practices for multiple kinds of religion. Three, it’s incredibly inexpensive. Four, it reminds us of our physical connection to spirit.” ~ Nissa Guest, Spiritual Living Examiner.

2. Get fuel for the journey
“If your earth and sky meet and mingle, it is your nature to blend these two as fuel for your life here on the planet,” Ellen Meredith, Energy Medicine Practitioner.

3. Happiness cures misery
“According to me the point of life is happiness. We all are trying to find a place where we are happy, be it by earning money or fame or getting married. Even a person who commits suicide is trying to be happy, thinking that it will end his misery. So I think, the point of life is to stay as happy as possible in any given circumstance and to create a better tomorrow for ourselves.”~ A WikiAnswers Contributor.

4. Subjective Woody Allen Findings

“For Isaac life is worth living because of Groucho Marx; Willie Mays; the second movement of the Jupiter Symphony; Louis Armstrong's recording of Potato-head Blues; Swedish movies; Sentimental Education by Flaubert; Marlon Brando; Frank Sinatra; those incredible apples and pears by Cézanne; the crabs at Sam Wo's; and, of course, Tracy's face. It doesn't get any simpler than that and Isaac's list would fill a lifetime and it's understandable. So many people are searching for some deep meaning to life when in fact it is all subjective.” ~Brad Brevet, reviewing Woody Allen’s movie “Manhatten”.

5. Know your math
“Life is problems. Living is solving problems.”― Raymond E. Feist, Silverthorn

6. To Infinity and and beyond reason.
“I go to seek a Great Perhaps.”― François Rabelais

7. Maybe “The Old Preacher” knows something after all.

“Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter : Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole [duty] of man.” Ecclesiastes 12:13

I think those are pretty high class quotes for an average middle class guy.