what is the meaning of life?

Question

"the question is the answer"

Answer 1

The philosophical question "What is the pirpose or 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

First of all, it isn't '42.' That is the answer to the question of "life, the universe and everything," which is a whole different question.

The question may indeed be the answer. It may well be that our purpose in mortality is to seek the answer to the riddle of why we are here. Have we been "sent" here to learn someting? Or do we, through the process of attempting to answer the question, define our own "meaning"? Is there an inherent "meaning," or is life as we know it merely the result of random chance and the interplay of chaos and entropy?

Before we can answer that question, don't we need to answer the questions of "what is real?" "what is the basis of our knowledge?" and "what is of value?"

Understanding that different people have different answers to these questions makes it a bit easier to see why different people come to different conclusions about the original question, as well as about more mundane things like whether or not to include ancient history in a school's curriculum or whether or not gays should be allowed to marry.

Answer 3

It means preparing for the death. like we prepare for the exam. Although exam last for hours or more but we prepare for whole year or semester. same thing with life we are preparing what will say when we will die. We will have to answer in God's court.

I know it sound ridiculous. This is idea i got if from when i as listening to Comedy CD. this is the message that gave in the end.
Life=Death
Study=Exam

Answer 4

42

Answer 5

I was actually thinking about this last night and I think that the meaning of life is to live and give life. I believe that my purpose in life is to make the people around me happier, whether its by making them smile or laugh at something I said or did, I feel that the greatest thing I can do in this world is to help make people happier and brighten their world.

*hugs*

Answer 6

To exist... to be born, to grow, to mature, then to simply die....
If man and all animals were to suddenly disappear... it a few hundred years Mother Earth would reclaim itself.

The meaning of life changes for each... Mine? To live it to the fullest and to leave an imprint so that others may follow, and then my life would not be totally in vain.

Answer 7

That's a big question for Yahoo Answers.

Answer 8

The meaning of all live is survival of the species, this is achieved through reproduction, period.

As for the self conscious human mind, apart from still adhering to the aforementioned, we also strive to give our own existence further meaning, which in itself is different for every individual to the extent of which their identities differ from others.

Answer 9

I think the Queens of the Stone Age actually sum up the meaning of life in their lyrics:

'I want something good to die for, to make it beautiful to live'

Answer 10

The meaning varies depending on who you ask. What is the meaning of life to you?

Answer 11

If you are correct the meaning of life is what