what is the meaning of 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

To find the meaning of life.

Answer 3

Life is either a dream or a nightmare depending on your state of mind. When you die you wake up and realise either what a fantastic dream you just had or you are relieved that you can have another crack at it after a real scare. No need to worry about anything-all that happens is only as important as YOU want it to be. Live for the moment-the dream is only short....

Answer 4

The meaning of life is what life means to you. It means something different to everybody. It's like asking "Is lasgna the best meal a person can have?" It is too general and not everyone can have lasagna for their own personal reasons or it may not be their favorite, but they still like it, or somebody with allergies cannot have it. It all depends on you. You make your own assumption and it is your answer. There is no wrong answer because it is what you feel about it. Good luck and I hope this helped you.

Answer 5

The meaning of life is to learn, and through experience's we have we start to come to the understanding of death and what is on the other side! so that we may live on in spirit.

Answer 6

According to the wierd robot guy in hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy it is 42 (thought I'd add a book comment as you posted this in the books section)

Or maybe the comment "Our's is not to reason why , our's is but to do or die"

Answer 7

my own definition of life is..
something that is unstable..
u never know what will come ahead..
it is full of surprises happiness and sadness
it is something we should really treasure..
because we have only 1 life to live..
it should not be wasted..
and it's the most precious gift we have ever received--our life.

Answer 8

the meaning of life is different things to different people.

i think that its the capacity to love others. the more you love, the more love you get in return.

i also believe in karma. what comes around goes around.

your kindnesses will be brought back to you threefold

Answer 9

To get the most out of life and give more back

Answer 10

nobody knows, but there probably isn't ONE meaning. Life is about survival, difficult to understand for humans in these times. So take a chill pill and relax.

Answer 11

42