What is the meaning of life?

Question

Why are we here? What does it all mean to you?

To clarify more, I'm not really asking to be told what the meaning of life is, but rather just to hear other views and opinions.

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)

Answer 2

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.

So the bottom line is, we only have a temporary meaning to life, to reduce pain and increase pleasure, other than that everything is lost to oblivion.


To be or not to be? "To be" is temporary and "not to be" is inevitable.....

Answer 3

Many, upon asking themselves, answer this most important of questions with an inspirational statement or two that has applied to their own good and bad experiences in life. While many of these sayings like "be happy", "try your hardest", "never be discouraged" and so forth are ways to help make life more meaningful, they will still leave the question of life nagging indefinitely. As many words as one can say will never bring closure to the question, for the answer is not a logical conclusion that one can share with others.

The "answer" to the meaning of life can only be found within oneself, appearing through the experience of realizing the connection of the core of what makes your being with that of the universe. If you truly want to reach this understanding, you must be willing to disregard all that has come between the pure essence of your existence and the person you have become to function in the world. The door to this journey has been left closed by many more than have opened it, for the idea of making changes and seeing the world in new ways is frightening for those who have made themselves comfortable in their place. When these people are asked your question they will give you a quick and unsatisfying answer.

Try to isolate the feeling that led you to ask your question in the first place and discover where it came from. Only you can find your own way to the one answer.

Answer 4

I have never understood this question. Why does life have to have a meaning? We are here because ages ago in the primordial "soup" some molecules of protein and other compounds came together and became alive, then started evolving. Eventually the intelligence of the species homo sapiens became so great that we became all "full of ourselves" and started thinking there must be something more to us. The only thing we have over the rest of life on this planet is a much bigger ego.

Answer 5

I have no idea why we're here. I mean why does life exist? There is no benefit of us. The earth is better of without us.
My purpose of living is to learn, and study new things, reach my goal (to become a biologist). Have a happy family, and change the world, even if just in a little way. Help people, and animals. Be happy, make others happy. Have a feeling that I've done as many things as possibly, and that I've tried. Than die...

Answer 6

One important truth is that we cannot bear to be without meaning because if we have no meaning, then we have no worth. This is why your question is continually being asked.

An important corollary: Someone may say his/her life has no meaning but no one can live that way. They invent some purpose and then pretend that it is real, e.g. "I want to make the world a better place", which of course is just a way to make themselves feel better.

Another important truth is that without a Creator/God, there can be no meaning because meaning requires purpose and purpose requires an intelligent design or plan.

It makes sense to me to seek God rather than to invent my own meaningless meaning.

Answer 7

Dear, from the grate Plato, Homer, and Aristotle this never-ending quest to justify existence was ever relentless. Throughout history, theories replaced theories, faiths pored as we moved on from the Stone Age to the Nano-age we are living and yes the question(s) of life’s origins, and where it is all going in one place.

To me, it is a journey with a beginning and an end, and one should always leave his/ her mark in history in futile because grass will eventually grow on all. Good luck

Answer 8

The meaning of life is to experience as much as possible and to reflect on these experiences.

Inherent are most universal principles (e.g. golden rule)

With very few to no truths actually given to us and accepting life as the reality in which we perceive it -

Answer 9

to be frank,,
buddha said
the purpose of ur life,,which is nothin but making ur next life better,,

make good deeds,,be kind and generous,,and smile everytime,,then ur next life u willbe rich,,and beautiful face u will have,,

if u r stingy and miser in this life,,ur next life u will born in a poor family,,
and if u don't smile enough,,ur next life u will have an ugly face,,

its all justice,,
and these r the words of GAUTAM BUDDHA,,not my opinion,
read it in " cause and effect ",,spoken by buddha himself

when ppl asked him how could we get good deeds more and more,,
he said--
" ur parents r two buddhas in ur family, instead of coming here to serve me,u could have served them and lived ur current life and next life blissfully "

Answer 10

We are here so that we can slowly make our way back to the oblivion of the grave.

Answer 11

work hard to serve community, love your family and friends (social life), and after all, get some time to yourself (a hobby or something, quality time)