We spend our days bound by endless obligations. Yet, even with loneliness, failed relationships, and soul-draining work, people still manage to catch a glimpse of happiness. Why?
Welcome to adulthood.
The question you ask is universal. The answer much less so and in that difference lies the journey of life.
For some it’s about amassing as much wealth as possible, for others it’s about cementing a legacy. The pursuit of happiness is a common approach and to serve is yet another. Some seek solace in religion, others in hedonism. Some spend a lifetime searching, others exist and take in the experience.
For me it’s about making the world a better place.
It’s up to you to create your own purpose in life.
In my view, connection with others and the happiness and joy we can find in that is the reason for living.
It’s what makes the world so terrifying that there are so many broken people who just want to hurt and dominate others and have no care for depth of connection. Because they are wasting their lives on accumulation of power and are painfully obviously deeply sad and broken people.
Sam Altman has his own issues, but he’s dead-on when talking about someone like Elon Musk:
“Probably his whole life is from a position of insecurity. I feel for the guy,” Altman said. “I don’t think he’s, like, a happy person. I do feel for him.”
So find people, find connections with them, make your life about your connection with others. That’s my suggestion. Love is scary, but also freeing. Will that be a struggle with the obligations we face? Sure, but not impossible, especially if you do your best to set clear boundaries and focus on your family and friends as opposed to the soul crushing job you work to be able to take care of yourself.
One of my favorite films is Dead Man. It’s a “buddy movie” about the importance of friendship and the unlikely places we find it. Two men who have been rejected by their respective societies find friendship, trust, and kinship in each other. I think this may be worth a watch for you.
I prefer not having a meaning of life.
Imagine having a real purpose. Then the question would still be “why”, but you’d also have that obligation to do.
It’s the everyday drudgery, miseries and annoyances that make the good times worthwhile. Just like you never appreciate the sun more than in a place that gets very little of it.
I currently live in a country that enjoys a very high standard of living and where people really do enjoy the good life. Yet weirdly enough, a lot of the locals are depressed and keep complaining. Why? Because they don’t realize what they have, because it’s their everyday normal.
As for what’s the point of living, if you don’t want to fall into the easy fallacies of religion, I suggest you simply enjoy your life while you can. You were born with a finite number of hours on this dirtball and they’re ticking away, so make sure you spend as many as you can with your loved ones having a good time. Because when the clock stops ticking, it’s over.
There’s no meaning, no purpose. We’re random life on a random planet. Try to have a happy life and try not to inhibit the happiness of others. That’s it.
There’s no meaning, no purpose.
… That you don’t provide yourself, and it could be anything.
Anything?
Whatever’s important to you.
It’s important to me that I have no goal or purpose, and I will focus on making that come true no matter that.
it could be anything.
But you have to actually believe it. So the trick is to find your purpose, as much as it is to make it up. There’s something in you that wants to come out… or maybe not!
All I know is that I’d rather be here than not be here. It doesn’t get much deeper than that for me.
You are the Universe experiencing itself.
Brilliant.
Well, things do happen after you die, just not to you.
Compassion for those who come after us is one possible source of meaning.
One could also consider that having no afterlife makes this life more meaningful than it would be compared to an infinity.
Your body decomposes.
Because the alternative would be having no happiness at all.
IIRC, the nihilist position is that there is no point, and the way I’ve chosen to interpret that is that it means we are free to personally define the point at any time, and for any length of time, as we please. The pointlessness lets us custom design life to fit our needs and desires, if we can minimize getting caught up in “you should do this and be that” external mentalities that may be incompatible with our natures. This seems like one of many correct paths to life satisfaction.
Of course, part of the battle is discovering what’s in your(you in general not you specifically) nature to do and be, and then having the courage to see it through no matter what influences around you are saying or doing that may contradict it. The other part being unlearning incompatible mindsets that may have been fed into your mind when you were younger; authority figures anywhere in, and in any stage of, life are in dangerous positions to cause long term harm to impressionable, trusting minds, which is why I personally focus more on the “figure” and less on the “authority” part of “authority figure” when I’m dealing with people in those positions.
“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it” - Aristotle or whoever actually said it.
Absurdism > Nihilism
You can either let the fact that nothing matters trap you, or you can allow it to free you.
From what i’ve observed, people deal with “there’s no higher power” differently.
For some people, that i call right-wing, or authoritarian, having some higher power that tells them what to do, is the meaning of life. If they lose that something, then they become depressed and stop living, in any sense, a joyful life.
On the other hand, there are people, which i am comfortable to call left-wing, or hippies, or communitarian, who don’t need that higher power to tell them what to do, in fact, it rather obstructs them. They are joyful even in the absence of a higher, guiding power, because they can find their own meaning in life.
Learn. Evolve. Improve one’s mind. Understand more of the universe. Gain a greater understanding of one’s place in the universe. Grow beyond what we understand and comprehend existence at this point.
There is no purpose but to be alive, or rather, you make your own purpose.
The point is to pass on your genes.
Lol I got sterilised at the age of 23. Guess I have nothing left to live for 🤷♀️ /s
That absolutely not the point I have made and determined for my run at existence lol
Hell yeah!
I have procreated and passed off my genes, but it’s bullshit to tell other people that’s the point of being alive.
You gotta do what you feel is right. If nothing feels worthwhile, make the best of the ride!
I guess everybody will come up with different answers to that.
To me, saying “there is nothing after death” is a simplified model. It asks you to live in the here-and-now, to live in the moment, because that makes you productive today.
Of course, the world won’t end when you die. You will leave an impact on the world, kind of a track. Like, when water flows over a landscape long enough, it leaves a river bed. That will stay, even after the water subsides.
So in some sense, death might be your end, but it’s not the end. I don’t know whether that helped you.
Nobody exists on purpose. Nobody belongs anywhere. Everybody’s going to die. Come watch tv.
Morty?
