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What is the meaning of life?

Does life have a purpose at all or does it not have purpose, which gives us the chance to make up any purpose?

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100+ Answers
Pararth Shah
Pararth Shah, Unfinished symphony.
Walt Whitman's poem is among the best pieces of literary or philosophical works that I have come across that try to sum up and answer the ubiquitous existential question "What is the meaning of life?":

"Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring,
Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,
Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,
Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?

Answer:
That you are here—that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse."

I think this is the most pragmatic way to go about life on a day to day basis. Looking at the "sordid" crowds around us that plod through a seemingly empty existence of going from one struggle to another can be quite disenchanting. But Whitman's answer is that it is foolish to look for meaning, because no meaning exists by default. The Universe has been functioning long before you were here, and will continue to do so long after you will be gone. You have a brief moment in history, a single verse in the powerful play, which is yours to write. It is up to you what meaning you give to your life, your actions, your career, your society.

So, what will your verse be? :)



P.S. Add Robin Williams' passionate voice and the poem is all the more delightful :)

(Clip from Dead Poets Society)


P.S. 2. Even better, add Apple's captivating visuals :)

(IPad Air Commercial)
Jeff Boss
Jeff Boss, Team coach, leadership development facilitator, founder, author
Not to sound cliche, but I believe the purpose of one's life is find purpose and enjoy the ride.

Purpose has been presented to me at multiple stages in my life across a wide range of scenarios, starting in high school  and lasting right up through my last deployment in the military. Purpose  is based off what we value and choose to act upon. As a result, passion  is ignited out of the meaning that we derive from our pursuits.


Purpose, Passion, and Sustained Superior Performance
Everybody has a motive for the things they do, but not everybody has a purpose and very few  have passion. A company’s reason for existence—purpose—is to serve their  customers and stakeholders. Profits are just a byproduct of the value  that customers buy into as to what the organization stands for. For  special operations forces (SOF), our purpose is to affect change, and we  do so by carrying out strategy and upholding the values and ideals for  which our country stands. Dead bad guys are just the result. Purpose  brings meaningfulness from which curiosity, a craving to discover, and a  desire to learn and improve, arise.
Having  purpose and passion for what you do are fundamental to sustaining  superior performance. I define sustained superior performance, or SSP,  as steadfast execution amidst frequent uncertainty. People who  can perform in the face of uncertainty—the ones who can conceptually  build a bridge and safely maneuver across it without setback—are the  ones who ultimately discover “high performer” status.

High  demanding jobs demand high performance ideals, and to be considered Tier  one in your industry requires Tier one people. Jobs that require you to  constantly travel and be away from your family, to face danger more so  than the average Joe, or to deal with great financial risks necessitate  more than just a step-by-step process of how to do these things.  Replicating “best practices” simply won’t cut it. Below are three ways  to identify your passion:

Knowledge.
When you dig  deep into the subject matter of your interest, does it entice you to  read more? Or, does it stop you in your tracks, rub your eyes, and make  you want to go play in traffic? Inquiring out of will and inquiring out of want are  two different things: the former is an act of self-discipline that,  over time, becomes tired of being “pushed.” The latter is an  indescribable phenomenon that “pulls” you along, without coaxing,  without reward.

Network.
Once you identify what it  is that fuels your fire, branch out to coworkers, neighbors, and friends  who are actually in the arena and pick their brains. You can always  count on topic of conversation that works well with anybody—a topic  about them. People enjoy talking about themselves, so ask about lessons  learned, anything he or she would do differently that may give you an  idea about how to start.

Circumstance.
Once you’re armed with enough know-how and know-why, you need to become a lab rat and test your theory. British Philosopher James Allen once said,

“Circumstances do not make the man, they reveal him.”

If,  after having tested what you thought was your new found passion turns  out to be a wash, don’t fret. You could even turn the difficulty of the  situation into a personal challenge to endure through—a whole new  purpose in itself!
Purpose and passion are what give you meaning.  Purpose tugs you along in its direction when passion subsides and allows  you to endure amidst uncertainty or challenge. They both spring up out  of nowhere at the most inopportune times as a means to test your will. Consider this opportunity a gift of circumstance.
Keith Guerin
Keith Guerin, designer, developer & entrepreneur

I stumbled across this page today and was surprised to see that I was the anonymous author! I recall a few years back I thought it would be interesting to ask the brilliant and thoughtful Quora community "the ultimate question". I'm delighted to see the hundreds of answers and great discussion it has elicited.

My favorite comment is from Tim O'Neill who made a clear distinction between extrinsic and intrinsic answers. He said: "The former are meanings that are built into the universe, imposed on us by its nature or (as in the Christian view) by a god or gods.  The latter are meanings we give to life, the ways we invest it with significance, goals, purpose, wonder, ambition and direction."

This really helps bring attention to the ambiguity of the question "What is the meaning of life?", and so I hoped to answer this question myself by asking these specific questions.

What purpose do you find in your life? (intrinsic)
The vast majority of answers address this intrinsic question. I'll leave the answer to them, as it is highly subjective. I would only add that our intrinsic purpose is driven by our nature as social animals – we seek to fulfill Maslow's hierarchy of needs – physiological, safety, love and belonging, esteem, self actualization, and transcendence.

Why does life exist? (extrinsic)
I was disappointed that there weren't many answers to this scientific question, and dismayed that many of them simply said said that life is meaningless and random.  This is an unresolved scientific inquery, but I believe there is an answer that is both plausible and meaningful. (As proposed by Schrödinger and others.):

Life exists as a result of the second law of thermodynamics and the principle of entropy. Essentially, life is molecules arranging themselves in a manner than increases the entropy of our world by collecting free energy. The purpose of life at all scales (life, specie, individual, and molecular) is to collect and redistribute energy efficiently.

I highly recommend checking out these links to learn more:
Big Think: MIT Physicist Proposes New "Meaning of Life"
Wikipedia: Entropy and life
Bassem Dghaidy
Bassem Dghaidy, Systems Architect
My experience so far suggests that the answer to this question varies, and it will keep changing (evolving or not) all throughout my lifetime. With every attained level of understanding my perspective on the meaning of life, changes. Today, I believe life has no meaning, it exists, will keep existing until the final day and my/our role in it is very miniscule.



Deborah Kelemen, PhD, Director of the 'Child Cognition Lab' at Boston University, primarily researches: "cognitive development. Current interests focus on children’s developing conceptions of the living and non-living natural world, understanding of intentional agency and reasoning about artifacts and object function. Other projects are exploring the development of social categories and the role of parental input in children’s prescientific theory-formation." [1]

Kelemen wants to know why children ask the question 'why' as early as 3 or 4 years of age. The 'why' question is another way of inquiring about 'purpose'. We, humans, seem to be hard-wired to ask this type of questions and we find it very difficult to accept the existence of something without understanding its purpose. The same applies to 'life'.

Through Kelemen's research, it is becoming more evident that even adults with higher educational levels, subconsciously attribute purpose based explanations to random things, even if consciously they understand there is no causality relation. e.g. question: 'The sun makes light, so Plants can Photosynthesize, true or false?' [2]. The experiment and findings are detailed in Kelmen's publications.

The above raises another question, 'why' are we hard-wired to inquire about purpose to begin with?

René Descartes uses this recursive 'why' questioning to prove the existence of God through the Causal adequacy principle. (Interesting read, by the way, although not very sound read more about the Cartesian circle).

God, for some, is the answer to the purpose of life question. For others, the answer is yet to be discovered. For me, there is no purpose.

We are simply consumed by a question that we still don't have a satisfactory answer for and I'm sure, that even if we do find that conclusive answer, our human nature and psychological attributes (as they are now) will never allow us to accept it. Our ego, will not allow us to do so.

Maybe, just maybe, the next phase of human evolution will allow us to be more objective and eradicate the genes that drive us to be so inquisitive about purpose and then, just then, we may be able put this question to rest and be satisfied with 'there is no purpose to life'.

[1] Research Interests: Deborah Kelemen, PhD
[2] The experiment and its description are extracted from Through The Wormhole Season 5 Episode 1 show.
Robert Frost
Robert Frost, Instructor and Flight Controller at NASA
We don't know.  We can't know.  But...

Every religion and every philosophy builds itself around attempting to answer this question.  And they do it on faith because life didn't come with a user's manual.

We live our lives inside a bubble with an opaque surface.  Is there something bigger?  Were we put here for a purpose?  What happens next?  What is the end goal?  Is there an end goal?  If those answers exist they are likely outside of our perception.

So, from our narrow perspective, what do we know?  Or think we know?

As far as we know, we get one life.  If reality is like a video game with three lives, we don't know that (sorry Hindus).  That's as much meaning as we can perceive or measure.  One chance.

So, ask yourself "If I had only one life, how would I live it?" and there is your meaning.

WARNING: ASKING THIS QUESTION RESULTS IN SELF-LOATHING EVERY TIME ONE LOOKS IN THE MIRROR, IF ONE DOESN'T FOLLOW THROUGH.  LIFE IS EASIER IF ONE DOESN'T ASK.

No kidding.  Those three minutes during which I shave are the worst moments of every day.  The lazy, cowardly asshole in the mirror has done a piss poor job of following through with what we decided we would do if we had only one life.  But there remains a sliver of hope he might accidentally do something right.

Every person is a unique miracle of odds.  They would be a different person if their parents had made love after the movie instead of before. A googolplex of variables had to line up to produce each of us as we are.  Whether that was a result of divination or random numbers, we can't know.  But that doesn't mean we can't appreciate it and be grateful for it.

How would the world be different if you had not lived?  THAT is the meaning of life?  If it wouldn't be different, then your life has no meaning.  That sounds harsh, but we don't need to watch Jimmy Stewart in It's a Wonderful Life to recognize that it is near impossible for an individual to make no impact on the world around them, if only in the proximity.

That means we largely set our own meaning.  Our actions - our being - defines the meaning of our life.  The smallest act of kindness or the smallest act of cruelty or apathy can have cascading ripple effects.  Life is the chaos theory Jeff Goldblum prattles on about in Jurassic Park, and we are the butterfly in South America.  But chaos can receive direction if we control our path through life.

On our deathbeds, we may have beliefs, but we won't know what happens next.  But we can look back and assess whether we made a difference that we can be proud of - that is the meaning of life.

Whether that difference is our work, our family, our joys, our experiences, our loves, or our sacrifices is up to us.



*brought to you by Quoraing after cocktails.
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