Curly holds up his index fingers and says, "do you know what the secret to life is? This."
Mitch replies, "your finger?"
Curly explains, "one thing, just one thing. You stick to that and everything else don't mean s**t."
Mitch then questions, "that's great, but what's the one thing?"
"That's what you gotta figure out," Curly says... End scene.
Mitch seemed to have it all, yet he was still missing the one thing. As a child I assumed the things that gave life meaning as an adult were things that just came along with growing up- marriage, career, family, good friends... Little did I know none of these things were guaranteed. Mitch had all of these things and was still restless and unhappy...how could that be?
For some reason that scene and those thoughts always stayed with me. The meaning of life is just one thing, for each person it's different, but once you've found it, hold onto it as everything else means diddly-squat. Watching it as a kid I suddenly found myself in the throes of an existential crisis. Even though I was far too young to know what an existential crisis was, and my father had to explain that you can't have a midlife crisis as a child.
The meaning of life became this elusive concept I was desperately trying to discover. What was my one thing? In church we were told that the meaning of life is our God-given purpose, our service to glorify Him. Purpose in service resonated with me. The "ah ha" moment in the film comes when Mitch assists with the birth of a calf. The love he experiences in that moment is transcendent. It's a universal sort of love akin to Agape "the love of God for man and of man for God". Perhaps the one thing is God's unconditional love.