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I've spent a long time wondering about the reasons for my actions... not just "why I do this," but also "why I should do that."

The truth is, after more than 40 years of thinking about it, the answers still elude me. It's as if each point I reach is only the beginning of a swarm of new paths I can take in my search for meaning.

I don't want to confuse myself, or anyone else; when I say (or imply, as I just did) that "life has no meaning," I'm not referring to the self-pitying way of someone depressed and on the verge of suicide who clutches their head while saying it, but to the reflective and indifferent way of someone making a statement about something no one asked them about...

I believe that everyone finds their own meaning in life. I'm not just referring to "not being dead," but to everything we do day after day, whether routine or unpredictable, pleasurable or painful, transcendent or trivial.

For some, the motive is based on their philosophical convictions, attributing a "mission" to the fact of being alive. This may or may not be religious. There are millions who believe their mission is to convince others that their beliefs are true, and they spread this like a kind of mental virus, which, once it conquers a mind, reproduces within it and spreads to others. There are others who believe their mission is to end this cycle, and they dedicate their lives to trying to design the antidote for these viruses.

For others, the main motive is hedonism, and they live their lives in pursuit of pleasure, comfort, delight... unlike others for whom it's unclear whether they find delight in suffering, or whether they truly believe that suffering is virtuous, and they spend their lives in anguish, resentment, and bitterness.

We could continue in this way, listing ways of living, whether conscious or not, and we could always take it a step further by asking ourselves what the meaning of meaning is. Recursion is infinite...

Perhaps it would be better to try another approach. Perhaps in that recursive spiral we could cut off the branches that lead to contradictions, those that lead us to points with which we disagree, or those that fall into circular reasoning. For example:

One motivation that has always intrigued me is accumulation. There are accumulators of material goods/property/money, of approval/admiration/attention from others, of knowledge/experiences/sensations, etc. Basically, they try to have as much of something as possible, whatever it may be. But this accumulation is not motivated by a subsequent use of what has been accumulated, but only by the possession of it.

Among these, the accumulation of money particularly catches my attention; what does someone who doesn't allow themselves to spend money want? I won't deny that it is a very useful means in almost any circumstance, but if instead of a means it becomes an end, what good is it? Then we have to live worried, watching out for those who want to take it from us, those who don't want it but would like us not to have it, constantly checking if it increases or decreases, imagining what we would do if we didn't have it or if we had much more, what will happen to our money after our death, etc.

That brings to mind a childhood memory. After running a small kiosk at home for a while, coins accumulated, and due to Argentina's constant inflation, the metal itself was soon worth more than the coins. Several bags remained stored away, waiting to be sold as scrap metal, watching the price of the metal rise. $1,000 worth of coins could be sold for $1,500 today, or kept for another week and sold for $2,250. It was fantastic... every day our potential reserve grew by more and more pesos (though not necessarily more in total value)... without us realizing that the worst thing we could do was exchange the coins for bills, because the moment we did, our small fortune would stop growing and begin to dwindle. Thus, the increasing value of those coins was essentially irrelevant, since by not exchanging them for speculative purposes, we couldn't capitalize on their value.

Then a direct use for those coins appeared, which at the same time avoided exchanging them for bills of diminishing value... Every night, a neighbor and I would climb onto the roof and pelt passersby with coins—thick 50 or 100 peso coins with San Martín's face on them. Sometimes we could even recover some of the coins the next day, since whoever found them wouldn't bother collecting them, as they were no longer legal tender.

Over time, the habit of throwing coins faded away as the coins ran out and we matured and found other pastimes. But the laughter from those moments remains with me every time I remember them, proving that there was a real way to enjoy their value without losing it. And happiness, whether fleeting or lasting, is a valuable end in itself, and a reason to keep living.

Today I do the same with my art: instead of exchanging it for money that will inevitably lose its value over time, I throw it to those who, unsuspecting, get close enough. And in the meantime, I enjoy doing what I love.