What's the purpose of life?

Question

sometimes i just wonder what the purpose of life.. i mean we eat, sleep,have fun and all.. days, months and even years pass by and then WHAT... to me it just seems like everyone does all this just to while up time and wait for their death day... i dont know if u get my point but its always troubling me.. dont worry i'm not suicidal or anything like that

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

I agree...fairly depressing isn't it. Edit: only attempt to be happy you're alive. each and one and all persons are fairly fortunate to be alive. the probabilities of you being alive are fairly slender. It potential, in the experience that your mothers and fathers hadn't occurred to fulfill, you does not be here. an identical is going to your grandparents, your great grandparents.... save occurring the line and it might hit upon trillions upon trillions of circumstances that have been achieveable to us not being here. yet all of those circumstances got here approximately from the time we've been mere fish swimming interior the sea. that is probably the only existence we are going to get. different persons don't have it as solid as us. each and one and all persons could desire to soak up all the happiness existence has to deliver and cope with one yet another peacefully, with love and understand because of the fact we are all on an identical boat and existence is emotional.

Answer 3

Essentially all thinking people will agree that the question "purpose of life" requires God.

“Unless you assume a God, the question of life’s purpose is meaningless.” –Bertrand Russell (noted atheist philosopher, mathematician and Nobel Laureate)

If we reject God, then we are left with doing exactly what you wrote, "...does all this just to while up time and wait for their death day...".

If we don't reject God, then our purpose in life pales in comparison to the question of how do I find God. So seek God and you will find both God and purpose.

Answer 4

There is no purpose to life except that which you define for yourself. The desire for a larger purpose is futile and will only lead to disappointment or delusion.

Answer 5

to me the meaning of the life is the integration of your mind and the body.

you see when you eat, your body is on the dining table but mind is busy in calculating the bills of the office. when you watch programe on TV your mind is busy in the market. when you lie on the bed to sleep your mind is making preparation for tomorrow's tender. you (today's man) are totally disintegrated.

the life gives you an opportunity to integrate you. you are a conscious being unlike animals. only you can integrate yourself because you have a will.

gurus preach, to bow in the temples, sit in meditations, join group therapies, proceed on holidays at beeches but all this is a wastage if you are doing it being divided at the core of your existence.

wine, money, merry, leisure nothing is prohibited if you engage in them after such integration. but if you do it sleeping in the sleep of disintegration it will be an offence against nobody else but against you. against your life. your life is the ultimate value, which you can aspire.



my source is the material studied at the webssite

http://www.lightinlife.com/

one particular article i want to refer here is

Living life at a url

http://www.lightinlife.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=75&Itemid=103



.

Answer 6

I too feel the same...
But I think we should work for a noble cause and die, so that it will be useful for human kind and also will leave a history for our life.

Answer 7

Stop questioning something that's out of reach for human knowledge (death)....*ahem* and the universe.

And you'll be happy!

Answer 8

the purpose in life is to find your purpose and live it! its as simple as it sounds.

Answer 9

To interact, to create, to give life, to learn, to listen, to hear, to understand, to obey, to give pleasure, to make mistakes, to correct them, to give, to provide for, to raise, to care, to help, to get hurt, to cry and to Love if and when possible.

Answer 10

if your a Catholic like me, you don't need to ask that question. for me, God gave me this life in order to use it for doing good things. if you still doubt, try study eschatology

Answer 11

click here to know more about life... It is my posts about life.

click here http://ghiacy.myblog.com/category/4517.html and move down the page