Point of Life?

[sahxox]

What is the point of living?
"Born to blossom, bloom to perish" - too true.
I spend my entire life waiting... waiting for next day of work, waiting for my shift to end, waiting for dinner, waiting to go to sleep etc.
Not really doing anything meaningful... but then what is meaningful?
It can get a bit philosophical lol
Sometimes I want to be a child again, then I remember that one day, I'll want to be 18 again. But right now I'm not doing anything extraordinary other then waiting, waiting, waiting... for nothing.
Arghh it's depressing when put like this.
Sure I have hobbies, but what is the point of life? Is it just waiting for shit to happen and achieving nothing in the meantime?

 

[mariospap]

I was wondering about this my entire life. There's a quote saying " Life is what happens while we are making plans for the future". I think it's John Lenon's quote.
It's a difficult question to answer. If you are religious, then you are preparing in this life for after life. If you are not, then it's just "have fun, eat & cr*p", which doesn't seem to be real the purpose of life. At my opinion, and by my religious point of view, life has given to us in order to improve our souls, Make good things, help people when they need it, give stuff without waiting for returns, have compassion etc. Things to be a better person, a better soul and reach the "bright light" when you die. Although I am a Christian, I believe in Buddhism Philosophy. So, basically that's my purpose of my life.
I am a lonely person, and I have all the world's time to practice on these stuff. My life is a total disappointment, and by practicing these, I want to believe that after death some nice thing will happen to me, which never happened in physical world.
The real purpose of life, is more than having fun, acting like stupid and social monster, eating and cr.... Maybe we're here because we're here, maybe we're here to improve our spirits and get lessons for our next lives (if there's such thing) or maybe ... we are a failed alien experiment. Who knows !

 

[sahxox]

or maybe ... we are a failed alien experiment. Who knows !

Haha that's great... wouldn't surprise me lol

 

[Finally]

It's all a test.

 

[LazyHermitCrab]

Well I think our nature is to be rewarded. If you work hard then hopefully you get stuff you want, but that doesn't always happen for an example.

 

[neardeath]

What is the point of living?
"Born to blossom, bloom to perish" - too true.
I spend my entire life waiting... waiting for next day of work, waiting for my shift to end, waiting for dinner, waiting to go to sleep etc.
Not really doing anything meaningful... but then what is meaningful?
It can get a bit philosophical lol
Sometimes I want to be a child again, then I remember that one day, I'll want to be 18 again. But right now I'm not doing anything extraordinary other then waiting, waiting, waiting... for nothing.
Arghh it's depressing when put like this.
Sure I have hobbies, but what is the point of life? Is it just waiting for shit to happen and achieving nothing in the meantime?

I remember the feeling of freedom as a kid. I miss that.

Nothing is easy to do anymore.

I just know if I can't see the rest of the universe after I die, I'm going to be pretty upset LOL :question:

 

[BlackPuma]

The point of life is to live it.

 

[MikeyC]

The point of life is whatever you want it to be, and it changes all the time.

What do you want to achieve right this second? A better job? A girl/boyfriend? A better body? Whatever it might be, that is your current point to living.

Once that is accomplished, that is not the end of your life. That is one more achievement before moving on to the next reason to stay breathing. Your point to living will have changed, but not your desire to keep living.

There's no one magical all-encompassing point to life. It's whatever you want to get out of it, and that changes constantly.

 

[Silatuyok]

I'm somewhat of a nihilist, so I don't really think there is a point to life. I don't think there's anything I can do or achieve that will make that big of a difference in the long run. And I mean the really long run.
However, there are things that give my life meaning. I spend most of my life trying to alleviate the suffering of animals. I can't live knowing that animals are suffering and not do something about it. I know that in 10,000 years it probably won't matter much which animals I've helped, and my efforts will be insignificant, but it gives me some peace of mind in the here and now to know that I'm doing everything I can for them.

 

[coyote]

The point of life is to live it.

i found this graffiti the other day at the top of a forest observation tower. i've decided to try to remind myself of this every day...

 

[coyote]

p.s. - here's the view from the tower for some perspective...

 

[leongrado]

I feel like the purpose of life is personal growth. This can be any kind of growth but it usually involves forcing yourself to confront your fears that are holding you back from growing.

 

[brokenfingers04]

yes life is meaningless but ignorance is BLISS. it would be nice or whatevr to be a kid again but to know then what u know now would be horrifing and tragic. the best way that I see to get through this life is to find something and/or someone to do and just keep going til the end whether it be by nature or choice either way it doesnt matter right?

 

[hidwell]

p.s. - here's the view from the tower for some perspective...

You live in one of the prettiest parts of America. I could not have chosen a nicer place to live myself. :bigsmile:

 

[Flanscho]

The point of life? Well, we live only once, so I think it is:
- find happiness
- make other people happy
- acquire knowledge
- share things
- learn things
- improve the world in general

 

[Froggy246]

maybe we're here to improve our spirits and get lessons for our next lives (if there's such thing)

I've always been drawn to this idea, it seems to make the most sense, Earth as a school (the prison planet) and we've chosen to come here to learn, experience and evolve our souls.
But I have been struggling with those same thoughts, it's so easy to get stuck in a routine, wake up, go to work, come home, eat, watch tv, sleep, wake up, go to work etc, never in the moment, always looking to the next thing, as mariosap said JL's quote 'Life is what happens to you while you're making plans'.
The typical dull existence doesn't seem like the best use of our short time here, considering the magnitude of where we are in space, how it all works so magically with the moon, sun etc.
It's hard to get out of that routine though, which is why I call it the prison planet, perhaps intentionally made harder by certain powers in order to maintain mental slavery. I think the key is to try and live in the moment as much as possible (Mindfulness) it's very difficult to do but it's like a gateway into a richer existence, either that and/or just do more stuff, challenge ourselves, go on adventures etc. That's what I reckon anyway.

 

[Odo]

I'm somewhat of a nihilist, so I don't really think there is a point to life. I don't think there's anything I can do or achieve that will make that big of a difference in the long run. And I mean the really long run.
However, there are things that give my life meaning. I spend most of my life trying to alleviate the suffering of animals. I can't live knowing that animals are suffering and not do something about it. I know that in 10,000 years it probably won't matter much which animals I've helped, and my efforts will be insignificant, but it gives me some peace of mind in the here and now to know that I'm doing everything I can for them.

I agree with this, including the bits about the animals… I would rather make animals happy than people-- because first of all it doesn't take as much work because animals appreciate the simpler things and secondly because they'll always appreciate the effort, unlike people, who will probably just try to get as much as they can out of you before you cease to amuse them.

Sometimes I get really cynical and say the point of life is to keep yourself so busy that you don't have time to think about how meaningless it is. To be honest, I don't think that this is completely uncommon… there are people out there with extremely empty lives and who have to keep doing things simply because busy people don't have time for the big existential questions.

I also don't think that it matters if you keep getting 'better'-- maybe the point is to try to be happy with whatever you have… because if you can do that, then doing more won't feel like something you need to do in order to not be a failure, it will just be something you do because you actively enjoy it.

I don't believe in self-improvement at all-- I actually think that it's a big part of the reason why people end up feeling like failures. I constantly look at all of the fitness ads and diet ads and spiritual health bullshit (all of it for profit, most of it a scam), and all that it does is stress me out… I wouldn't even know how to improve the human world… I've actually seen poverty up close and it's pretty awful… and not even in a way that makes you want to help, because you really can't-- it's too overwhelming.

So yeah, I really don't think that anything related to helping myself or other people could possibly be improving the world at this point… people mostly suck, and there are too many of us.

 

[Kiwong]

Life is a holiday on earth. Holidays on earth can be wonderful and horrible.

Leunig

 

[sahxox]

I agree with this, including the bits about the animals… I would rather make animals happy than people-- because first of all it doesn't take as much work because animals appreciate the simpler things and secondly because they'll always appreciate the effort, unlike people, who will probably just try to get as much as they can out of you before you cease to amuse them.

Sometimes I get really cynical and say the point of life is to keep yourself so busy that you don't have time to think about how meaningless it is. To be honest, I don't think that this is completely uncommon… there are people out there with extremely empty lives and who have to keep doing things simply because busy people don't have time for the big existential questions.

I also don't think that it matters if you keep getting 'better'-- maybe the point is to try to be happy with whatever you have… because if you can do that, then doing more won't feel like something you need to do in order to not be a failure, it will just be something you do because you actively enjoy it.

I don't believe in self-improvement at all-- I actually think that it's a big part of the reason why people end up feeling like failures. I constantly look at all of the fitness ads and diet ads and spiritual health bullshit (all of it for profit, most of it a scam), and all that it does is stress me out… I wouldn't even know how to improve the human world… I've actually seen poverty up close and it's pretty awful… and not even in a way that makes you want to help, because you really can't-- it's too overwhelming.

So yeah, I really don't think that anything related to helping myself or other people could possibly be improving the world at this point… people mostly suck, and there are too many of us.

I pretty much agree with everything you're saying... the only thing is that personally I hate having this point of view as it can be very draining. However I think the stark contrast to this cynicism is idiocy. Guess I'm trying to choose between hopelessness/feeling completely down and being an everyday moron if it means happiness to an extent.

 

[mikebird]

I feel like the purpose of life is personal growth. This can be any kind of growth but it usually involves forcing yourself to confront your fears that are holding you back from growing.

Hindrance can happen anywhere on the timeline - just one, or several times
with endless factors of your effort or not enough
or bullying or medical.

Not fair. I put excuses on the back burner and stand up for looking after myself, and blame the fools who like to hold me back from doing what I can. It is legal to quote medical gripes... as encouraged by doctors & family. So limp. I missed out in the confidence to put 3rd fingers to family & docs to carry on with contact sports and army practice at school. That's a life skewed in early life I can do nothing about. I manage not mentioning it; but now I do.

If I told my schoolmasters to get me to do the Rugby, swimming and army, they woulda liked it. Paranormal hindrance when I was a pin cushion for intravenous treatments that never worked at all. I was fed prednisolone steroids for years which made me red and grossly fat through school to starting uni. Now I'm working it all off really hard. I love it.

Sorry for moaning. I want to post an old fat photo if I can find one

I can see what held me back, but I didn't see it. I ignored all contradictions and criticism in early life. I felt superior to all those people.