What life is for?

Question

People come and go, we live now and be gone after some years, nd be gone, and new one comes and be gone after some year. We face all aspects of life, we eat, enjoy, fail, get sick, get well, fail and triumph and die. What we do? with all this passing time and all be gone?

We chat for what? What is there in life? What is the real meaning of life? Some say to enjoy, others say to be remembered, some say to contribute to the future of mankind. Yes those are all good reasons to live but all will pass away. Great man made things ended, even great men ends. There were people who lived here 300, 500, 700 and so years ago, they were our forefathers and who are they? they loughed, cried got angry and and felt what we feel but all gone, just like us. After 200, 300, 400, 500, 600 years who will know us? Just like them we were all long gone. Tell me what is the real essence of life. How can we get into the real essence.

Tell us so we may have a truely meaningful life.

Thanks

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

The meaning of life is 42.

Answer 3

I really wonder just how long this question has been boiling in your mind. The question in itself is tricky but nevertheless needs a very careful answer.

You may be right in some ways in your views, philosophically speaking, that is. But isn't trying to endure life for decades without really knowing its meaning and purpose, bring enough fear and anxiety? Just imagine yourself being stuck in a place or situation, or job without really knowing and understanding why you need to be there -- Isn't the idea of simply waking up another day to live the grind makes you wanna welcome dying in your sleep? Maybe this question separates the "have faiths" and "have nots". The idea boils down to one thing, which is of course, God.

Maybe what confuses human being of what the real essence of life is the belief that nothing in this earth, or dimension, or life can ever be bigger than God, and that nothing in our life form binds us with God. Maybe that is why even with man's great accomplishments, there remains a space inside them that feels empty and unfulfilled, as if in his mind and heart, even in his accomplishments, his life simply goes on circles.

We've all heard about stories of children being adopted, have grown in a family that treated them otherwise, loved and cared for. The children grows and becomes successful but inside feels empty just the same. The reason: there remains a yearning inside them for the source of their earthly life, a biological mother that is left unknown. As if the real mission of these children's life is the search for their mothers and fathers. And when they are reunited by luck or fate, something magical happens, the children suddenly feels complete and if brought together by love, they start to live life for one another.

As human beings we always feel this yearning for the answer of what our lives are all about, after all when we know that soon we will all die, we'd like to make sure we have lived our lives to the fullest. We long to know the answer to that question because the truth is, just like the adopted children, we yearn to be with the real source of our life, which is God. Our lives whether we know or not leads us to him. And that something inside us that oftentimes feels empty is his spirit that binds us to him. It feels empty when we do not know him or refuses to know what he has tasked us to do in this life. God is our creator and therefore leads us to the life we need to take. By accepting and receiving God, the pleasure of living this life in the way God dictates is suddenly welcomed. Suddenly, the purpose of life means service and sacrifice for others, not for human recognition but for God's recognition. Suddenly life is all about compassion, patience, forgiveness and need to share love. A road less travelled as the cliche' goes because it is all about human inconvenience, practically non-profit. But the personal, emotional and spiritual satisfaction is unexplainable. Maybe the reason why some people forget all about the works of great men of the past, all about the greatest contribution to humanity, was because these people do not yet see that the purpose of life is real service to mankind for God's recognition. And to the one who knows, he goes on with life in full confidence and he does so because he knows his purpose and he knows that each sacrifice he takes on in this life is a step closer to the union with his creator.

Answer 4

The purpose of life is to learn and to grow.

Answer 5

We were created for Gods happiness.

Answer 6

Just be true to yourself...