How do you justify your existence?

Question

There is a popular theory that every person, every thing on the planet is here for a reason.

If this is accepted as a truth, then the question begs answering.

What is your purpose for being here? What justifies your being alive and walking the planet today? For what reasons do you exist?

Answer 1

My purpose is to learn from the experiences life has to offer. I must be mindful of harm, joyful of pleasure, kind in touch, moderate in judgment. I must learn all I can of the past, the future, and the present. Our task here is to live. I do not live to die, as so many religions insist. Instead, I appreciate the world every day. I appreciate the sights and sounds, I recognize both the pain and the gentleness. I am here to exist, and that is all I am guaranteed. I have no religion, no expectations. I do not need to look past death as I may miss something today.

Horace famously wrote, "Carpe diem" often translated as "Seize the day," but really he meant "pluck the day" in that each day should not be lived in the Epicurian way as though it were the last, rather to experience that which life has to offer while it is offered, for to pass then denies all that we truly have. Granted, he was attempting to woo a woman with his words, but his advice is sound. We weight our shoulders with faith and dogma, not living to live, but living to die.

I am fully justified at every sunset, in every flower I behold, in everything experience. My purpose is met. I live.

Answer 2

Your question confuses two questions, both making hardly defensible assumptions. One assumes a pre-ordained purpose for every life, a role or function in some grand scheme of things; the other assumes a requirement that that everyone justify their life. Two trumped-up questions which, lacking obvious answers, make an artificial breach into which can step whatever religion or ideology the asker cares to urge forward.

I reject your questions, but offer to answer the question many of us do ask of philosophy - the question of the meaning of life.

Life has only the meaning you give it yourself. You can choose your own goals and values, your own ends and means. Basically, there are three sorts of alternative, and each has both positive and negative 'roads' to take.

One, you can live life selfishly. This, from a moral point of view, is negative - looking out at all times for 'number one'. But it need not be negative - not if you have a special ability or high degree of ability (say, in art) and you concentrate on developing that ability in a way that is 'selfish' in the short term but is likely to make a contribution to human good in the long term.

Two, you can invest yourself in others. This can range from simply concentrating on being a good parent, to being a dedicated contributor to some community or some organization, whether it be a political party, a commercial company, etc. But the negative side of this is that you might devote too much of yourself to this road, demanding of others that they take it also, and find together, in the latter part of your lives, that the group you have dedicated yourself to has changed negatively from what it was despite your efforts, and you might, when it is too late, regret not indulging yourself a little more than you did.

Thirdly, you can turn away from both self and others and, negatively, abandon any attempt to be a moral person, letting yourself be ruled by your emotions or appetites, to the cost of both yourself and those around you. Or, positively, become one of those intensely 'practical' people who 'get things done' (but are good for little else).

Of course, it is possible to combine elements of each of the three basic alternatives - though it probably isn't advisible, for sanity's sake, to combine both negative and positive roads.

It might be comforting to assume a grand scheme of things, but there is no evidence to support such a scheme - there is only the authority of wilfulness. Nor does the long history of such wilfulness constitute evidence.

Answer 3

I happened across an interesting passage last night from Bertrand Russell:

"[A]s a general rule, we are not able to predict with any accuracy what people will do. This may be only from inadequate knowledge of the relevant laws, or it may be because there are no laws that invariably connect a man's action with his past and present circumstances. The latter possibility. . . is always unhesitatingly rejected except when people are thinking about the free-will problem. . . ."

He goes on to point out that if free will held sway "there would be no way of influencing men's actions." If a person as a rational motive, we understand him. If he or she doesn't, we think they're crazy, confused, mislead. So long as we accept motives or insanity as explanations, it does seem that, out of strict fairness to rationality, we must dismiss our emotional attachment to free-will.

HOWEVER: Even if we accept existential determinism there is no necessary supposition that any sort of intelligent reason must exist. We are "free" (heh) to suppose intelligence, but its necessity is by no means certain. There is a high degree of order, for example, in salt crystals. Does that mean the crystals themselves are intelligent? Does it mean the people who collected them are intellgent? Does it mean the people who possess them are intelligent? Can the salt crystals determine or justify their own purpose?

Maybe they can or maybe they can't or maybe it depends on who you ask.

Perhaps the better question was asked by the Existentialist school: If we could answer the question of purpose in the way we want to, if we could live our lives in such a way as to create our own purposes, how would we live? Maybe its up to us--in the sense of own happy illusions of choice. In that sense, the concept of free-will may have a useful purpose--we can't deduce our fates, so why not make the best of them?

In an effort not to entirely dodge the question, I'd say maybe I could justify myself by being a productive, self-supporting member of society.... and by attempting to improve myself and help others when it seems they can be helped. And perhaps enjoying myself in the process.

Answer 4

Yes, I do believe in this theory.
I guess I can’t answer that am still young but since I was a child I always had this curious moments when I think about why am I here? What am I supposed to do in this life?
Since then it has been my motivation to discover my purpose in life.
I think that most people only know that when they are really old or dying and look back then to their lives and wonder if they had fulfilled their position.

Answer 5

Well first of all, I can believe in God and still not be devoted to serving him all my life. Isn't that what heaven is for?

And second, none of us have to justify our existence. We exist. That does not depend on whether or not we can come up with a good enough reason to allow us to keep existing. We simply are.

Besides, what's the purpose for cockroaches?

Answer 6

Knowing the reason for ones own existence is indeed a journey to their Creator through relationship. (The Gospel of John Ch.1Vs.3) states ( All things were made by Him and with out Him was not anything made that was made.)John Ch.1 vs. 1-14 points this out more clearly.However back to your question finding out your own existence is task enough why complicate your own life by trying to find anothers own reasons for existence you'll know that answer as you build relationships with Truth & Compassion.

Answer 7

"I wished to know the meaning of things. I am the meaning. I wished to find a warrant for being. I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction.

It is my eyes which see, and the sight of my eyes grants beauty to the Earth. It is my ears which hear, and the hearing of my ears gives its song to the world. It is my mind which thinks, and the judgment of my mind is the only searchlight that can find the truth. It is my will which chooses, and the choice of my will is the only edict I must respect.

Many words have been granted to me, and some are wise, and some are false, but only three are holy: 'I will it.'"

Answer 8

There is no true justification for existing, it simply is. Your purpose in life is either self created or pre-determined, either way you will never know your true purpose until it has occured. So I guess the justification to existance, is living long enough to find the purpose that you've made or is waiting for you.

Answer 9

I justify my existence by knowing that I am going to change peoples lives. I am going to be the catalyst, unnoticed and in the background, that slowly shifts the entire world into a slightly new direction, one that I feel is better. Will it be? Who has the foresight to know?

Answer 10

The reason we exist is because we've created ourselves, or rather, our identities. These identities we create are what we act from and what we do is motivated by these identities. If you move beyond the identities then you don't have a meaning you just are.

I don't really have a reason to exist, but I do do things for a reason and that reason is to serve my identites, as much as I don't like to.