what is life?

Answer 1

"What is the meaning of life?" is a question many people ask themselves at some point during their lives, most in the context "What is the purpose of life?" Here are some of the many potential answers to this perplexing question:

Survival and temporal success

* ...to accumulate wealth and increase social status
* ...to advance natural human evolution, or to contribute to the gene pool of the human race
* ...to advance technological evolution, or to actively develop the future human
* ...to compete or co-operate with others
* ...to destroy others who harm you, or to practice nonviolence and nonresistance
* ...to die having succeeded in your purpose
* ...to gain and exercise power
* ...to leave a legacy, such as a work of art or a book
* ...to live
* ...to produce offspring through sexual reproduction or asexual reproduction
* ...to protect one's family
* ...to pursue a dream, vision, or destiny
* ...to seek freedom, either physically, mentally or financially
* ...to seek happiness and flourish, experience pleasure or celebrate
* ...to survive, including the pursuit of immortality through scientific means (see life extension)

Wisdom and knowledge

* ...to be without question, or to keep asking questions
* ...to expand one's perception of the world
* ...to explore, to expand beyond our frontiers
* ...to learn from one's own and others' mistakes
* ...to seek truth, knowledge, understanding, or wisdom
* ...to try to discover and understand the meaning of life
* ...to understand creation

Ethical

* ...to achieve a supernatural connection within the natural context
* ...to achieve enlightenment and inner peace
* ...to achieve rebirth in the Pure Land
* ...to become like God, or God-like
* ...to be rewarded for your deeds
* ...to experience existence from an infinite number of perspectives in order to expand the consciousness of all there is (i.e. God)
* ...to express compassion
* ...to follow the "Golden Rule"
* ...to give and receive love
* ...to live in a way that you don't harm yourself and don't harm your environment
* ...to work for justice and freedom

Religious and spiritual

* ...to be a filter of creation between heaven and hell
* ...to die and become a martyr
* ...to live in peace with each other, and in harmony with our natural environment (see utopia)
* ...to produce useful structure in the universe over and above consumption (see net creativity)
* ...to protect humanity, or more generally the environment
* ...to reach Heaven in the afterlife
* ...to seek and acquire virtue, to live a virtuous life
* ...to serve others, or do good deeds
* ...to turn fear into joy at a constant rate achieving on literal and metaphorical levels: immortality, enlightenment and atonement
* ...to understand and follow the "Word of God"
* ...to worship, serve, or achieve union with God
* ...to disprove the existence of a or all all gods

Other

* ...to achieve self-actualisation
* ...to contribute to collective meaning ("we" or "us") without having individual meaning ("I" or "me")
* ...to find a purpose, a "reason" for living that hopefully raises the quality of one's experience of life, or even life in general
* ...to live, and enjoy the passage of time
* ...to have fun
* ...to participate in the inevitable increase in entropy of the universe
* ...to make the conformists' lives miserable (see non-conformism)
* ...to participate in the chain of events which has led from the creation of the universe until its possible end (either freely chosen or determined, this is a subject widely debated amongst philosophers)
* ...to relate, connect, or achieve unity with others
* ...to resolve all problems that one faces, or to ignore them and attempt to fully continue life without them, or to detach oneself from all problems faced (see Buddhism)
* ...to seek and find beauty
* ...as there is no intrinsic meaning to life, to each individual, the "meaning of life" is whatever he/she decides it is. In that sense, every point above is potentially valid.
* ...an answer to the question "What is the meaning of life?" is that it is just simply being able to ask the question, "What is the meaning of life?" (see Sri Sri Ravi Shankar below)
* ...a combination of any of the above.

No purpose, and therefore...

* ...to simply live until one dies (there is no universal or celestial purpose)
* ...just a series of events
* ...just nature taking its course
* ...the wheel of time keeps on turning
* ...the cycle of life
* ...whatever you see you see, as in "projection makes perception"
* ...there is no purpose or meaning whatsoever (see nihilism)
* ...who cares?

Answer 2

Man has questioned that since the dawn of time..., i haven't found the answer in any religion, none of their fairy tales make sense or stand the strutiny of objective science or reality. So what then, is the reason for our existence?

Ive come to the conclusion that there is no "reason" or preordained purpose. We came from randomness and will go back into randomness. The chance meeting of one egg with one of a million spermazoa, and then death with our molecules returning into random nothingness.

Pretty dreary, when you think of the loneliness of no afterlife, but then maybe you'll try to make the most of what you can do during the short sojourn you have on this Earth.

What gets me, is that 80% of the Earth's population have a distorted worldview based on religion. Most scientists are atheists, not all, but most. And of the ones who believe in god, the astonomers are the fewest percentage.... that tells me something.

Answer 3

Be not afraid of life,believe that life is worth living and ur belief will help create the fact.Every step of life is a risk.Life is like a good book,the more u get into it the more it make sense..
Thank you.

Answer 4

Life is the characteristic state of organisms. Properties common to terrestrial organisms (plants, animals, fungi, protists and bacteria) are that they are cellular, carbon-and-water-based with complex organization, having a metabolism, a capacity to grow, respond to stimuli, reproduce and—through natural selection—adapt.

An entity with the above properties is considered to be organic life. However, not every definition of life considers all of these properties to be essential. For example, the capacity for descent with modification is often taken as the only essential property of life. This definition notably includes viruses, which do not qualify under narrower definitions as they are acellular and do not metabolise. Broader definitions of life may also include theoretical non-carbon-based life and other alternative biology.

Answer 5

Life is a state of animation. Lack of this animation is known as death. This is a simplistic answer. There are depths of meanings that can be explored behind your question. It also depends on why you have asked this question. If your question was driven by simple curiousity then all the answers posted are, more or less correct as they are different aspects of life.

If you are doing a metaphysical enquiry into the nature of being then you need to explore further as this question by itself is meaningless.

Answer 6

Life is Relationship.

Answer 7

It's a game - play it but be SAFE as it is only ONE. Try to achieve what you want to by overtaking the barications you would be exposed to. Be just and honest as you are answerable to the Almighty. After all winning the game in a fair manner is what matters most. God Bless You...

Answer 8

Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action. If an organism fails on that action it dies. As long as an organism succeeds it lives.

Note that by this definition, virii are not alive.

Answer 9

Life is nothing, humans are the only things that live that can ask that question, put it this way if we werent smart enought to think "what is life" we really wouldnt know we were alive. so therefore the fact that we can simply process that question is life, not life itself

Answer 10

Life to me is a series of experiences.We grow wise from everyday challenges and discover something new about ourself.Life's a game of survival of the fittest.We live to help others and to spread smiles.My message is to practice love,compassion and kindness,so that we can rightly live and not just merely survive.
'Live as if you were to die tomorrow.Learn as if you were to live forever.'

Answer 11

life is a shiver that flies away..is all an equilibrium over the madness... this's a part of an italian song very famous in italy (vasco rossi) and i think it's true...
PS sorry for my english :)