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)

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

The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything:

42

Answer 4

The meaning of life is "TO MAKE YOUR LIFE MEANINGFUL". Each 1 of us has a unique way of giving our lives meaning. Self-awareness, appreciation, family/friends, doing what you love, enjoying/living for the moment, & not basing happiness on temporal/material things, etc. . . . . . these are just some of the ingredients for a meaningful life.

Life is like a painting, you create your own masterpiece.

Answer 5

Life is what you make it. So the meaning of life is what you say it is.

Answer 6

The meaning of life is that we should live our lives to the fullest and not be afraid of death. To live in haromey and peace with each other. To not have violence or fighting. That is the meaning of life.

Answer 7

To spend my time on Yahoo Answers writing trite responses to the question: "What is the meaning of life?"

Answer 8

The meaning of life is to live.

That is it.

You make your own meaning & purpose in this world.

[Spoken]
Put your hands together everybody!

Aye aye aye oh aye aye aaaaaye
Don’t let no small frustration
Ever bring you down no no no no
Just take a situation
And turn it all around
With a new attitude everything can change
Make it how you want it to be
Staying mad why do that give yourself a break
Laugh about it and you’ll see

[Chorus]
Life’s what you make it
So let’s make it rock
Life’s what you make it
So come on come on everybody now
Aye aye aye oh aye aye aaaaaye

Why be sad broken hearted
There’s so much to do
Yea yea yea yea
Life is hard or it’s a party
The choice is up to you
With a new attitude everything can change
Make it how you want it to be
Stayin' sad why do that give yourself a break
I know you want to party with me

[Chorus]

Let’s celebrate it join in everyone
You decide (You decide)
Cause life’s (Cause Life's)
what you make it (Aw yeah)

Things are looking up
Anytime you want
All you gotta do is realize that
It’s under your control
So let the good time’s rock and roll (Ow)

[Spoken]
Come on everybody!

D-d-d-do it now
Aaaaaye
All right (Let's get the party started)
Yea yea yea (Now that's a party)
Yea yea (Put your hands together)

[Chorus]

Let’s celebrate it join in everyone
You decide (You decide)
Cause life’s (Cause Life's)
what you make it (Aw yeah)
Life is what you make it.

Answer 9

Dear,

The Meaning of Life.

"LIFE"; the sum of the activities of plants and animals that distinguish them from dead matter;

The period between birth and death.

a series of experiences;

manner of living

liveliness

living things

the story of a life

Answer 10

The meaning of life is the ability to ponder such questions, that is what makes us human

Answer 11

Catholics believe the meaning of human life is to know and love God.

For more information, see the Catechism of the Catholic Church: http://www.usccb.org/catechism/text/prologue.htm

With love in Christ.