dun u think there’s more to life than just: being born, grow up, go to school, go to uni, graduate, work, get engaged, get married, have children and die?
i mean sure that there are variations in between for different people.. some people might have skipped a few steps entirely….but seriously, what are we born for?
there should be a purpose. rephrase: there MUST be a purpose for each and everyone of us.
i’m still combing through mine. have you found yours?
Dude… this is freaky!
I was having this exact same conversation with a friend of mine over some beers last week.
This question has haunted me for quite a few years now… and I still can’t find an answer. Surely it can’t be all about earning money and leading a happy prosperous life. Yes, money is important and so is happiness… but I feel they are not an end in itself… but a means… but means to what end… I fail to comprehend. It very unsettling to think about it. I feel there’s a vacuum in me which needs to be filled… which needs answers. Sometimes I wonder, if faith in God and religion fill this vacuum.
Some of my friends have said that our purpose is to help other people… to make a difference in someone else’s life… but that doesn’t add up. Some other people have said that our purpose should be to rid the world of evil… but what is evil??? Who decides what is good or bad… how do you reach a completely objective definition of evil? That opens a whole new area of discussion.
Anyway, till now… the only reasonable answer I’m leaning towards… is that the purpose of life is that THERE IS NO PURPOSE OF LIFE! You live as you want to… and do whatever you want to do… be it for whatever reasons - materialistic, religious, spiritual, emotional. When you think about it… it can explain a lot of things… but I’m still not convinced!
Hi PK and Tedy
Strange that - I had this feeling I’ve coined “the omnipresent why” after yoga-class today. And it gets me really really depressed. But then, as I was walking home, I started to try to reason my way out of it. But that still didn’t help. So I stopped thinking about it. And then I realised something - that I’d stopped feeling cold, that I didn’t feel that my steps were heavy…
So this was the key: Stop thinking. Stop analysing. Stop thinking “I want - I think - I wish - I feel” etc.
And then you realise how pointless it is to ask why… because questions of why are questions generated from the self - and these questions become meaningless when one can see beyond the ego.
… But it’s hard… and it can be fleeting. In fact, I think I’ve lost that feeling already, and trying to describe it in words to myself is like showing a desert nomad a drop of water and saying that the ocean consists in a lot of this stuff.
… Meaning of life? We spend a lot of time contemplating the meanings of a lot of things in Philosophy, but it still doesn’t answer the questions. Perhaps it’s the very fact that there will always be questions that makes us keep going, after all. Would you want to live anymore if you knew everything? If it’s the case that you would always want to know more, and not to know everything, then is the meaning of life the pursuit of knowledge?