What is the meaning of life?

Answer 1

The philosophical question "What is the meaning of life?" means different things to different people. The vagueness of the query is inherent in the word "meaning", which opens the question to many interpretations, such as: "What is the origin of life?", "What is the nature of life (and of the universe in which we live)?", "What is the significance of life?", "What is valuable in life?", and "What is the purpose of, or in, (one's) life?". These questions have resulted in a wide range of competing answers and arguments, from scientific theories, to philosophical, theological, and spiritual explanations.

These questions are separate from the scientific issue of the boundary between things with life and inanimate objects.
Popular beliefs
"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. The responses are shown to overlap in many ways but may be grouped into the following categories:

Survival and temporal success
...to live every day like it is your last and to do your best at everything that comes before you
...to be always satisfied
...to live, go to school, work, and die
...to participate in natural human evolution, or to contribute to the gene pool of the human race
...to advance technological evolution, or to actively develop the future of intelligent life
...to compete or co-operate with others
...to destroy others who harm you, or to practice nonviolence and nonresistance
...to gain and exercise power
...to leave a legacy, such as a work of art or a book
...to eat
...to prepare for death
...to spend life in the pursuit of happiness, maybe not to obtain it, but to pursue it relentlessly.
...to produce offspring through sexual reproduction (alike to participating in evolution)
...to protect and preserve one's kin, clan, or tribe (akin to participating in evolution)
...to seek freedom, either physically, mentally or financially
...to observe the ultimate fate of humanity to the furthest possible extent
...to seek happiness and flourish, experience pleasure or celebrate
...to survive, including the pursuit of immortality through scientific means
...to attempt to have many sexual conquests (as in Arthur Schopenhauer's will to procreate)
...to find and take over all free space in this "game" called life
...to seek and find beauty
...to kill or be killed
...No point. Since having a point is a condition of living human consciousness. Animals do not need a point to live or exist. It is more of an affliction of consciousness that there are such things as points, a negative side to evolutionary development for lack of better words.

Wisdom and knowledge
...to master and know everything
...to be without questions, 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 understand and be mindful of creation or the cosmos
...to lead the world towards a desired situation
...to satisfy the natural curiosity felt by humans about life

Ethical
...to express compassion
...to follow the "Golden Rule"
...to give and receive love
...to work for justice and freedom
...to live in peace with yourself and each other, and in harmony with our natural environment
...to protect humanity, or more generally the environment
...to serve others, or do good deeds

Religious and spiritual
...to find perfect love and a complete expression of one's humanness in a relationship with God
...to achieve a supernatural connection within the natural context
...to achieve enlightenment and inner peace
...to become like God, or divine
...to glorify God
...to experience personal justice (i.e. to be rewarded for goodness)
...to experience existence from an infinite number of perspectives in order to expand the consciousness of all there is (i.e. to seek objectivity)
...to be a filter of creation between heaven and hell
...to produce useful structure in the universe over and above consumption (see net creativity)
...to reach Heaven in the afterlife
...to seek and acquire virtue, to live a virtuous life
...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 discover who you are
...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

Philosophical
...to give life meaning
...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 know the meaning of life
...to achieve self-actualisation
...all possible meanings have some validity
...life in itself has no meaning, for its purpose is an opportunity to create that meaning, therefore:
...to die
...to simply live until one dies (there is no universal or celestial purpose)
...nature taking its course (the wheel of time keeps on turning)
...whatever you see you see, as in "projection makes perception"
...there is no purpose or meaning whatsoever
...life may actually not exist, or may be illusory )
...to contemplate "the meaning of the end of life"

Other
...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 participate in the inevitable increase in entropy of the universe
...to make conformists' lives miserable
...to make life as difficult as possible for others (i.e. to compete)
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Answer 2

To live a life of meaning

(answer is in the question)

Answer 3

I would say to be happy in your own life. To interact in the lives of others and bring joy to those you can.

To live your life as if each day was your last and never look back on the past with regret.

Life is what you make it and how you make it.
It is shaped by our dreams and desires, and fulfillments, but also shaped by other who step into our lives, even if it is for a brief instant.

Answer 4

The meaning of life is a fundamental philosophical discussion of human existence, chiefly consisting of interpretations such as: "What is the origin of life?", "What is the nature of life (and of the universe in which we live)?", "What is the significance of life?", "What is the purpose of life?", and "What is valuable in life?" These questions have resulted in a wide range of competing answers and arguments, from scientific theories, to philosophical, theological, and spiritual explanations.

Note that these questions are all separate from the scientific issue of the boundary between things with life and inanimate objects.

Answer 5

The meaning of life is to live, to live the best you can, and to help other people to do the same.

Answer 6

state of being alive: conscious existence: animate or vegetative existence.

When you ask for 'meaning', I interperet this as dictionary definition. No?

So....here are a few dictionary 'meanings' for life, which i am sure you could have done for yourself.

Anyway, the state of being alive--what does that mean?
Conscious existence--what does that mean?
Start at the beginning. Of course, the 'meaning of life' is not about selfish hedonistic pursuits of the individual. It has actually been said that consciousness has been around long before you and I. But then how would we know? I mean actually KNOW. Does a tree make a noise and all that tosh. One hand clapping blah.

Answer 7

Life just is. It has no intrinsic, or built in meaning of it's own.

All the meaning that life will ever have is the meaning that you give to it.

Looks like its up to you.

Love and blessings Don

Answer 8

There was a man who became obsessed with finding the meaning of life. He read many books, traveled the world, and sought out many teachers, but none of their explanations satisfied him. Finally, he heard of a very holy hermit who lived in a cave high in the Himalayas and was said by many to be the only man who truly understood the meaning of life. At once the man set out to find this holy teacher, and, after many adventures, he finally arrived at a cave high on a steep and forbidding mountain, where he saw an old man seated in the lotus position.
He asked the old man, "Honored sir, I've been told that you alone understand the meaning of life. Please be so kind as to share this secret with me."
The old man answered, "Life . . . is a fountain."
Perplexed, the man repeated, "Life is a fountain?"
And the old man answered, "You mean . . . life isn't a fountain?"

Answer 9

Watch the Monty Phython movie.

Answer 10

Searching for meaning

Answer 11

Monty Python's fourth and final film released in 1983.