The meaning of life, what do you think it is ???

Answer 1

I don't think it really matters.
Life is what it is... no matter what that is, no matter your ability to define it... no matter your definition of "meaning"... You are. That is the fact.

And what if you could answer the question? What if we knew, for sure, that there is a creator, and the purpose for our existence... would we live any better? Wouldn't we then feel obligated? Wouldn't that strip us of any freewill we have?

Maybe the meaning of life is to LIVE it, and not to question it all the time.

Answer 2

Before I got saved the question "what is the meaning of life" specifically "what was the meaning of my life" baffled me. And it made me sad. Because I was living a life that was pointless. My goal was to make it from the beginning of one day to the next alive and not too badly damaged. And whether you're saved or not, sometimes life calls for those kinds of goals. But it had been going on so long - me living life without real aim or a concept of a big picture of any kind - that it had become my daily struggle and I was dying from it.
And then I got saved. And I found a purpose for living other than living, other than pure self preservation. Because the purpose of your life shouldn't be mere survival for more than a season.

So my answer to your question is this: that if you're not saved then the purpose of your life is to keep breathing. Maybe you'll have a cause every now and then - feed the starving children, politics that you believe in, stop the clubbing of baby seals. And those are all good causes. But they're not enough to base your existence on.
But if you're a Christian then the purpose of your life is to be salt and light to a dark and dying world. Basically there are people out there dying of a fatal illness called sin and when you get saved you're endowed with the knowledge to cure their illness. So, how pissed would the world be if the person with a cure for Cancer accepted the cure for himself and moved on with his life ignoring anyone else who was dying of Cancer?
And that's not to say you go around forcing Christianity on people; which, really, true Christianity can't be forced on someone. Morals and ethics can, doctrine and dogma can, religion can. But true belief in Christ can't. By definition salvation through Jesus is something that has to be accepted on an individual basis.

And on the issue of salt and light I feel the need to point out that the same salt can sooth one person while irritating another dependent on the condition of those people's skin. The same wattage of light from the same perspective can be a relief to one person while being an irritant to anther person dependent on how adjusted the person's eyes are to the dark.

Just to cover my own self let me give a disclaimer to anyone reading this: talking about it does not constitute 'forcing down your throat.' Talking about it a lot and from a view of Christianity as undeniable truth and the only correct viewpoint does not constitute 'forcing it down your throat.' If I at any time taped you to a chair and quoted doctrine at you or held a gun to your head and made you say the sinner's prayer on penalty of death by gunshot, yeah that would be forcing it on you. But verbalizing my opinions even if I verbalize them as fact is not some violent act of raping your mind.

Answer 3

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 4

To make your own meaning, I think. Honestly, I've thought about this a lot, but right now, I think I need to think about it some more.

Answer 5

the meaning of life is what you want it to be...

Answer 6

does it really HAVE to have meaning?

Answer 7

If you knew the answer what would be the point in living?

Answer 8

Existence, Knowledge, and Experience.

Answer 9

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 10

Life is like a bagel. It's delicious when it's fresh and warm, but often it's just hard. The hole is the middle is its great mystery, and yet it wouldn't be a bagel without it.

Life is like eating grapefruit. First you have to break through the skin; then it takes a couple of bites to get used to the taste, and just as you begin to enjoy it, it squirts you in the eye.

Life is like a banana. You start out green and get soft and mushy with age. Some people want to be one of the bunch while others want to be top banana. You have to take care not to slip on externals. And, finally, you you have to strip off the outer coating to get at the meat.

Life is like cooking. It all depends on what you add and how you mix it. Sometimes you follow the recipe and at other times, you're creative.

Life is like a jigsaw puzzle, but you don't have the picture on the front of the box to know what it's supposed to look like. Sometimes, you're not even sure if you've got all the pieces.

Life is like a maze in which you try to avoid the exit.

Life is like riding an elevator. It has a lot of ups and downs and someone is always pushing your buttons. Sometimes you get the shaft, but what really bothers you are the jerks.

Life is like a room full of open doors that close as you get older.

Life is like a puppy dog always searching for a street full of fire hydrants.

Life is like a poker game. You deal or are dealt to. It includes skill and luck. You bet, check, bluff, and raise. You learn from those you play with. Sometimes you win with a pair or lose with a full house. But whatever happens, it's best to keep on shuffling along.