What is the meaning of life?

Answer 1

O SON OF DUST!

All that is in heaven and earth I have ordained for thee, except the human heart, which I have made the habitation of My beauty and glory; yet thou didst give My home and dwelling to another than Me; and whenever the manifestation of My holiness sought His own abode, a stranger found He there, and, homeless, hastened unto the sanctuary of the Beloved. Notwithstanding I have concealed thy secret and desire not thy shame.


O SON OF BOUNTY!

Out of the wastes of nothingness, with the clay of My command I made thee to appear, and have ordained for thy training every atom in existence the essence of all created things. Thus, ere thou didst issue from thy mother's womb, I destined for thee two founts of gleaming milk, eyes to watch over thee, and hearts to love thee. Out of My loving-kindness, 'neath the shade of My mercy I nurtured thee, and guarded thee by the essence of My grace and favour. And My purpose in all this was that thou mightest attain My everlasting dominion and become worthy of My invisible bestowals. And yet heedless thou didst remain, and when fully grown, thou didst neglect all My bounties and occupied thyself with thine idle imaginings, in such wise that thou didst become wholly forgetful, and, turning away from the portals of the Friend, didst abide within the courts of My enemy.

Answer 2

Life actually does have an intrinsic meaning, but to get to it we're going to have to progress a little sideways. So bear with me...

Before we can talk about the meaning of life, I think it's productive to first ask the question, "What IS life?". This is a bit easier to answer, if not perfectly clear, because biologists obviously have to be able to explain what, exactly, the bio- part of their name refers to.

Biologists themselves often approach the question backwards. Instead of defining life as a whole, they instead consider the number of things that we generally consider to be 'alive' and figure out what qualities they all seem to have in common. This gives us a handful of properties that all living things we know of seem to have, including growth, reproduction, and the ability to make long-term adaptations to the environment.

Okay. So what does that MEAN? Again I think we need to break down our question with another one: "What IS meaning?" I'll take the same approach as the biologists on this one and consider examples. If a boulder fell on someone's house, and one observer asked another, "What does that mean?", what would acceptable answers be? I can think of a number of them ("It means that was a bad place to build a house"), and what they seem to have in common are that they describe greater implications and intent. Or in other words, given the event, process, or object, what will happen in the future, what led to it in the past, and what effects and intents does it have in the present?

So what does life do? It changes things. We know from the definition of life that it grows, consumes, spreads, alters its environment and alters the ways in which it does all these things. Having living things around means things are going to be different later, and probably were different before. Any time we imagine a place where nothing is ever different the only way that image works is to make it completely devoid of life. So that is something.

But it's not everything. Life doesn't produce just ANY change, but a certain flavour of it. Simply put, living things want to live. The changes living things make, generally speaking, either help them do so or kill them off. So life is not just about change, but change ideally for the better, even if practically it falls short sometimes.

This, then, must be the meaning of life. To change for the better.

Curiously enough, a quick survey of major philosophies, religions, and systems reveals that almost all of them seem to integrate this concept. Change for the better. There may be other important things, as some of the above systems would suggest, but to 'change for the better' is, at least, is the one thing implied by the very nature of the way things are. So do it!

Answer 3

80% of humanity, the religious folks, don't need to ask the meaning of life, the church tells them....the supernatural explanation. But the rest of us can't swallow religious dogma, because there's no evidence. Nobody can prove that there life after death, that people are tortured or rewarded after life or that there's invisible spirits running around.

I've come to two conclusions recently:

1. Life has no meaning
2. Life has a million meanings.

First, there's a certainty that death and annihilation awaits not only you, but the Earth in general. It's an astonomical certainty that our sun will supernova and leave the earth a burnt crisp, not to mention all the other extinction level events around the corner.

Second, the million things that give us meaning are the pleasurable experiences we can conjure up during the short period we are here on the earth, in the form of the relationships we have with our kids and other people, and the 'housekeeping' types of purposes. What i mean by that are the curing disease, ending hunger, improving literacy, reducing crime, preventing war, helping other kinds of things.

Answer 4

It all depends if you are one with Mother Nature or are you talking about yourself... If you are talking about yourself.. You must be prepared to do nice things for people who need the help.. Life is a open book that has not been written in yet, like tomorrow.. One might think that... But I see it as doing the very best one can be and do the right things.. If one did not do the right things, then their life was meaningless... An old man told me once that it don't matter when you get old and die.. What matters is what you did during your life...

As far as Mother Nature goes.. I've seen many winters here in Upper Minnesota.. The fact is that during the winter everything almost dies when it gets 20 below zero.. When spring comes back I see life as all the trees turn green, The Geese fly back up north.. Flies, Spiders, and Skeeters come back.. People think Christmas is the best time of the year.. Not me.. It's spring and fall..

So the meaning of life is what you want to do with it... If ones life was worth all the meanings.. I think you answered your own questions..

Answer 5

good question-first let me ask if you are in control of one. some people thrive on being in control of other peoples lives we got a belly full from every president that was going to make the world safe. for them i mean they didn't say they were making the world safe for you know the difference. if the cops stop you are you so important that they don't want to bother you, maybe not. are u powerful enough in your town to get what you want anytime you want anything, i think not. and the better assumptions just keep coming up all the time what is the meaning of life when i see so many people who will never live the way it use to be and there is no meaning to wasting your life and most feel they are really wasting away in the fact that only the rich will be a beneficiary here and somewhere the things will fall on the poorer of the situation for the greater good of the hole

Answer 6

The meaning of life is to love.

Answer 7

The meaning of life is a Monty Python movie!

Answer 8

You can draw this conclusion by negating the things that you perceive. The perceiver and perception can not be one on the same. For example, if your finger is cut, you feel the pain. You feel the pain means, the “You” is not the pain itself. By this logic, when you experience anything in this world, you always remain as an experiencer whether it is pain or pleasure, it is not independent of the experiencer. Your experiences can change but not you, the experiencer. Your perceptions can not exist independent of you.

Answer 9

There is no meaning in life. It is like a spark created by friction. Live it, love it, use it and do not wonder about it. It is very short.

Answer 10

To realize the purpose for which you were created and to bring glory to the Creator. Begin the discovery by reading the instruction manual - God's Word.

Answer 11

The point of living this life is to determine if we are deserving of the fortunes or misfortunes of the next life.