Life's Purpose: An Exploration
September 20, 2024
Why do humans exist? What is the point? These questions have plagued humans for centuries. In fact, the first reference to life’s purpose in English is in Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus in 1833–1834 which used the phrase “meaning of life.” It’s an intellectually stimulating question yet no uniform consensus has been found on the subject.
Some state that the purpose of life is to attain knowledge, to gain the maximum information that pertains to the world around us. This could make sense as humans have the most capable reasoning and logical thinking skills of any other animal on the planet and should utilize the gift given to their race. It’s also plausible as everything done in life provides more knowledge, even in subtle ways. Watching a YouTube video, while seemingly purposeless and a “waste of time,” very well provides knowledge. It may be empirical knowledge, it may be knowledge contained in facts, or it may be the knowledge of the lives of others.
Some state that the purpose of life is to attain happiness, an endless pursuit of contentment and fulfillment. For some, this happiness may come in the pursuit of knowledge. For others, it may come from the relationships they build with those around them, it may come from the activities and experiences they have in life, or it could come from pursuing their goals. Similarly to humans’ ability to think, humans experience complex emotions and indescribable mixtures of emotions. Humans derive enjoyment, a positive experience, from happiness and as such always aim to perform actions that bring them the closest to a short-term variant of that positive experience. This tendency of humans can manifest itself negatively in the sense that short-term happiness often brings long-term suffering, pain, or regret. As a result, it becomes a significantly more difficult quest to find long-term happiness while weighing short-term sufferings and pleasures.
But maybe life is about none of these. Life’s purpose is not ubiquitous. Each person is unique and harbors his/her own values. As such, a person’s purpose is defined by themselves, not by one imposed by others. This in itself is a purpose; the reality is that life’s purpose is to pursue life in such a way that you believe fit, whether that is through attaining knowledge, gaining happiness, helping others, or any other means. Constraining oneself to a restrictive box containing an end-all-be-all purpose serves nothing. Do what you want.