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

Here is how i tried to define the purpose of life...but yet i know there is lot missing...

If you believe in Mighty God and/or afterlife and/or reincarnation and/or Karma and/or Hell & Heaven etc of spiritual state life is about being "good", about helping other, following the path God showed us, standing out as noble person because you will finally be rewarded during or afterlife through different ways ex. Karma, hell & heaven.

If you do not believe in what you don't see and/ or you do not believe there is Mighty God, afterlife, hell & heaven etc. it is absurd to find meaning of life coz there is no meaning in life. We basically come down to Earth, grow, and die. It doesn't matter what we did in our life, whether we were "good" or "bad" because when you are dead, you are dead and there is nothing more to it. We will be gone and people will still be there, life cycle goes on even after we are gone, nothing really changed coz one 'me' dies. Yes, People(relative, family, and friends) might miss us for a while but with time those memories will fade...sooner or later they will forget about u and they will move on with their life as if nothing really happened. If you were an extremist (really "good" or "bad") you might get chance to be captured in history but would it matter to u? You aren't even there. It's just that you will be overloading future history students with ur biography. So, does it make a difference that you live "good" or "bad" life? Nope, unless it affects you while you are living. If u are physically, mentally, and emotionally affected by ur "good" and "bad" deeds then only it matter what you are: "good" or "bad". But the question arises, what if there is more to it? what if Mighty God exists? what if we will be judged as "good" or "bad" afterlife? do you want to take chance?

Answer 3

This is very simple. So simple, you've probably thought of it but never thought it could be the answer. You're here for one purpose and one purpose only-to continue to be here. Not you particularly, but your lineage and as a whole, the human race.

First of all, every single relative you've had in your lineage is within you. You are a mixture of so many strings of DNA, it's ridiculous. And those who came before you are too made up of different combinations of DNA. This explains why successive generations continue to evolve. Everything your parents knew at the point you were conceived was passed on to you. That is why if ever you meet a child born of older parents (in their 40's or 50's), those children always seem to be a bit more intelligent-they have the benefit of their parent's infinite wisdom.

You're only here to procreate. There are life forms on this planet that are born, procreate, and die, all within a matter of hours. And to them, those hours are a lifetime. Time is relative. If you look back through history, you'll see that we used to not have a long life expectancy. Depending upon how far you go back, people only lived to be 30 or 40. But through medical advances, and evolution, we've managed to conquer most of our natural predators, both visible and microscopic.

The beauty of it all is this-we can choose how to live our lives (to a certain extent). If we aren't tainted as children by drug abused parents, physically or sexually abusive adults in our lives, or society's carelessness, we can become adults who find beauty in the world and seek to spread it to as many people as we can. Unfortunately, we live in a world where people around us are abused and they grow up to do very ugly things to the rest of us.

Learn as much as you can. Love the people around you who love you back and appreciate your stay here. Although it is fraught with challenges, life can be beautiful.

Answer 4

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Answer 5

The meaning to everyone is different. You need to find what yours is and unfortunately that isn't easy to do. Some people never discover their answer to that question. I think God puts us here to see what we do with it. I also believe that if we knew the answer to that question we would stop looking to God for any answers and He doesn't want that. Maybe that is His way of us keeping Him in our lives.

Answer 6

Just to live life to the fullest. i think everyone has asked themselves that question before and [this is just my opinion] but whats life without God? hes the one that gave it to you so why not thank him by living for him? I love my lord and i thank him for everything hes done for me. plus partying is a big part ;]

Answer 7

learn from your past when preparing for your future and always make sure you treat people the way you want to be treated in life

Answer 8

Life is whatever you make of it.

Answer 9

Discovering who you truly are. And having fun along the way.
That's what I believe.

Answer 10

Live, Laugh, Love and nothing less

Answer 11

I thought it is a movie by Monty Python.

Or it is to continue breathing as long as one can.