Think Free.: The Ultimate Question.

What is the meaning of life?

This a question many people ask themselves at some point during their lives, most in the context "What is the purpose of life?"

I'm 18 years old & I'm asking this question to myself. I have asked this same question many times before, but until now, I was unable to understand the question with proper depth. Inorder to find an answer to this question, I took a step back from everything that ties me to this world. I let go of religion, family, friends, society, love, my academic performance, entertainment, and I stopped my life completely. I looked at my room, I looked outside the window, I found people moving on with life holding on to their beliefs.

I took out the map and started reading names of places. Places that were named by humans, Places that humans divided. I take out the Solar System chart, I saw rocks that were named by humans. I started to look at our world in a completely different point of view. This is the only world that we know. No matter what we do, we are the only witness. No matter how much we achieve, it is completely useless as our fragile world gives way to darkens in its final sunrise.

I compared the earth to a jawbreaker that is coated with poison & us humans, to tiny little ants. Devouring the sugary poison because it wants to survive. But ultimately, it perishes. Then why did it live?

In my search for answers, I found these (Thanks to wikipedia).....

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 survive and reproduce
...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 die having succeeded in your purpose
...to gain and exercise power
...to leave a legacy, such as a work of art or a book
...to live
...to be holy
...to prepare for death
...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 pursue a dream, vision, or destiny
...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 (see life extension)
...to complete your list of life goals
...to find something to believe in
...to attempt to have many sexual conquests (as in Arthur Schopenhauer's will to procreate)
...to succeed in our dreams, and live at your best and satisfaction.
...to think, and open the other 85% of our minds.
...to have fun, and enjoy life the way you desire.
...to be a part of history

Wisdom and knowledge

...to be without questions, or to keep asking questions
...to try to discover and understand the meaning of life
...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 man about life

Ethical

...to express compassion
...to follow the "Golden Rule"
...to give and receive love
...to live in a way such that you do not harm yourself and do not harm your environment
...to work for justice and freedom
...to live in peace with each other, and in harmony with our natural environment (see utopia)
...to protect humanity, or more generally the environment
...to serve others, or do good deeds
...to cultivate and share the highest quality cannabis, and to preserve old school genetics

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 be 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 worship, serve, or achieve union with God
...to discover who you are

Other

...to be emotionally fulfilled
...to find true love
...to live, love, and laugh
...to achieve self-actualisation
...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 live, and enjoy the passage of time
...to participate in the inevitable increase in entropy of the universe
...to make conformists' lives miserable (see nonconformism)
...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 relate to, connect with, or achieve unity with others
...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 (see Buddhism)
...to seek and find beauty
...to contemplate "the meaning of life"
...to make life as difficult as possible for others (i.e. to compete)
...all possible meanings have some validity (see existentialism)
...death is the meaning of life
...to know yourself
...a combination of any of the above

No purpose, and therefore...

...to die.
...to simply live until one dies (there is no universal or celestial purpose)
...a series of events
...nature taking its course
...the wheel of time keeps on turning
...the cycle of life
...whatever you see you see, as in "projection makes perception"
...there is no purpose or meaning whatsoever (see nihilism)
...life may actually not exist, or may be illusory (see solipsism or nihilism)
...to contemplate "the meaning of the end of life"
...teleology is an illusion brought on by evolution, which shaped our instincts

Philosophical

...life in itself has no meaning, for its purpose is an opportunity to create that meaning

JUST STOP!!

I'm not able to pinpoint an answer. Maybe I'm not able to understand it. But I do know one thing, Life is just a waste of time. At age 18, I'm tired of living. Tired of a wild goose chase. Right now, some readers of this entry will say that life is not a waste of time, and give me replies to support their claim. I do not wish to argue, I just want to hear a proper answer and accept and understand it, as it is.

I feel much comfort when I hear the words of some freethinkers, when they say, life is just random and pointless. But I feel a lot of discomfort when they say life has a meaning and purpose BECAUSE I find no valid reason to accept it like them.

I can't concentrate on anything. I'm not able to sleep. I'm not able to watch my favorite TV shows. I'm not able to laugh at jokes. I'm not able to drive with concentration. I'm not able to love. As long as this question is not answered, I don't think I ever will.

4 comments:

Unknown said...: Well Ru...you just read my blog. I am trying to figure out the very same thing. I want to know how people go about choosing life or death. What drives some people to continue while others fail at that approach.
Thnaks for posting Ru...if I find an answer I'll let ya know.
Love and hugs,
~Z~; January 26, 2007 at 6:56:00 PM GMT+5:30
EvolutionRules said...: Why try to figure it out? Why must there be a meaning to life? I leave it to science to figure it all out. Philosophers can propose ideas; however, only science can prove anything. Look at other living things ie: birds, fish; plants; insects, etc. What is the meaning of their lives? We are just like the ants. We can be "crushed" at any moment, our lives extinguished. We are just here. We can make choices. We can indulge ourselves with amusement (which includes thought without action) or we can act to make the world better for those less fortunate that ourselves. By the way, I'm not judging because I am in the group of the self-indulgent!; January 27, 2007 at 7:55:00 AM GMT+5:30
Abhyudaya said...: Ehhhhh...... The purpose of life for me is discovering myself and doing all that I can.... Gain experiences and then die with a satisfaction that I was lucky to have discovered myself before my demise. I want the process to be quick in order to help the society see from my eyes and perhaps, benefit from it.

My time is running out.... and I gotta find someone QUICK!; January 29, 2007 at 3:09:00 PM GMT+5:30
Anonymous said...: Ah, Ruben. At 18, you have begun to search by asking the right questions. It isn't until later that the answers become more clear. It's a process, and that in and of itself, is a reason for the journey.

We begin in a fog. Only gradually does the fog lift -- revealing first the world that is close to us and easy to understand and, in time, the mountains in the distance that we can only ever journey towards.

You do well to ask the questions. Don't give up on your journey. It becomes more of an adventure as time goes by. If you can wait for the fog to lift, you will begin to see the things that are presently not clear...

Your friend,
-- H; February 8, 2007 at 4:43:00 AM GMT+5:30

Think Free.

Thursday, January 25, 2007

The Ultimate Question.

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