What is the meaning of life?

Question

Each person has their own meaning of life what is yours,why and what happens when you lose your meaning of life do you lose your way or do you lose yourself?

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

There are no other animals on earth that can ask that question,or wonder about it,this may be a start to meaning.
We are the only animals with the ability to be objective,yet all other animals result from the same process in an evolving universe.
Before us and others like us the universe was an unknowing entity with no insight into it's own existence.
With the emergence of us and many others like us the universe became aware of itself.
Maybe our status as the eyes,ears and consciousness of the universe,gives some meaning to life.

Answer 3

The meaning of my life is to be there for my family and friends... and of course my boyfriend. This gives me meaning. I also find that whenever I help someone I feel as though my life has made a difference to someone else and therefore has more meaning.

Life is just as meaningful or as meaningless as you make it.

If you lose the meaning of your life, just stop thinking about YOURSELF and YOUR problems. Seriously, get a hobby or volunteer. There are many people who could show you just how much meaning your life has by making a difference in someone elses world.

Answer 4

Eash person does have their own meaning. I wanted to grow up, get married and have kids, go to a job I enjoyed and be able to live well. Not necessarily rich, but If I needed or wanted something I could afford to get it. You set these "goals" when you are young and imagining what the future will bring, when you are my age and you have achieved some of these goals your life enters a different road, my road has been travelled and now I am going to start to look back and see my children set off on their own journey through life. Life has disappointments, no doubt about it but you just keep going....

Answer 5

How wonderful it is to have some perspective, dear. After constantly asking yourself what direction your life is going, doesn't it feel great to finally feel as if you know? How very wise you are! Yet all this recent wisdom is exhausting. You feel as though you've made a long trip up to the mountaintop to speak with the learned wise person at the top. Now that you're back down in civilization, it's time to find a soft bed and relax for a bit.
~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~

Answer 6

Well, my cyber friend, that question has been asked since the beginning of time, by many great people or many ordinary people! I am starting to believe that we are here to learn lessons and evolve over lifetimes or in different spheres of existence. Many people laugh or scoff at this, but think about it, even the super rich aren't happy are they, and so many times if you ignore a problem, it returns tenfold later on (just like a Mario game!) so there MUST be a reason as I have never met or read of anybody from ANY walk of life who says they are happy in every way.so therefore there must be a higher plan for the problems we encounter, they are meant to make us FIND A SOLUTION>>
Keep on keeping on....
Juliette.

Answer 7

An opportunity to learn and experience as much as we can in this world by interacting with others and experiencing emotions brought by problems, successes, and surprises and also learn from them and mature.

It is that with conjunction to an opportunity of using all that learned material and experiences (maturity) to make a change in the world or our surroundings and make ourselves live forever by remembrance of others of us after we die and leaving behind a fulfilling history and story about what we were and did while we lived.

I like the answer from "Copy and Paste"-guy.. but if you think about it.. I said almost everything he said in just general statements that encompases most of what he said.

Hope that helps!

CHRIS

Answer 8

well, if you're a christian, the meaning of life is to bring glory to God, doing the right thing is the meaning of life. And giving people who don't know God the option of going to heaven by telling hem the good news that christ came to save us, is one of the greatest goals there can possibly be.

Answer 9

To seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before.

Oh sorry, that was a flash back from my Star Trek days.

The real answer is to make the best for yourself and your family and just be happy with your life.

Answer 10

I don't have a grandiose meaning to life. But, I've always believed our purpose on this planet is to leave things just a little better than we found it. If everyone did that, just imagine the world we'd have.

Answer 11

death is the meaning of life we are born to live and we live to die we also are hear to do our bit in updating the generation we live in so that the generations that come after us will have something to build onto well thats just what i think ;)