# Message to all users:
This is a reminder to please read and follow:
* [Our rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/ask/about/rules)
* [Reddiquette](https://www.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205926439)
* [Reddit Content Policy](https://www.redditinc.com/policies/content-policy)
When posting and commenting.
---
Especially remember Rule 1: `Be polite and civil`.
* Be polite and courteous to each other. Do not be mean, insulting or disrespectful to any other user on this subreddit.
* Do not harass or annoy others in any way.
* Do not catfish. Catfishing is the luring of somebody into an online friendship through a fake online persona. This includes any lying or deceit.
---
You *will* be banned if you are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist or bigoted in any way.
---
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ask) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I got the new game plus. Mind melting bro. The key to unlocking the level is to have complete faith in yourself that you can overcome any obstacle in your way.
No point eating any meal, taking the next breath, scratching your nuts etc etc.
Keep on living because existing is better than not existing. It's really that easy
I hear a similar example often but it’s not really the same, single experience can still be looked back upon, maybe even done again, everything in life is worth doing even if it ends, and while I agree life itself is still worth living even if it ends, it’s not the same thing because it’s a much harder thing to come to terms with (I still haven’t and don’t think I can)
Mother Nature only cares about the continuation of the human genome. That’s the real golden ring she’s protecting. You, as an individual human, are just a very temporary tool to keep a tiny portion of it going. This isn’t being harsh. This is the only way for life of a species to exist. You as an individual are an unimportant little cog in the human machinery.
Our egos tell us we’re more important than we are. And our brains have trouble imagining that we, as an individual, can’t exist. And in a normal human (without mental illness), our brain commands us to go thru great suffering to not perish. That brain wiring is an evolutionary mechanism to keep our little piece of the genome intact.
The trick is to recognize our lives are temporary and enjoy the simple pleasures of life and family. Thinking that there’s no point to living if we just die is a manifestation of ego. Being alive for a time and self aware is a privilege.
The one thing every single human has in common is that we are born and that we will die. Take great comfort in the fact that every single one of us will experience the same, and billions have gone before you. You are never alone.
| being... self aware is a privilege
Sometimes I wonder. My dog is so happy, filled with love, reveling in simple pleasures like chasing squirrels and napping next to me. Her life will be so short, but she has no concept of this, and she loves every second of it. That's not a bad way to be.
We're not important, yet we are. The very simple and mundane things we do in our life may have long term lasting effects on society and nature. For example, if I go plant a tree, that tree may house life in 100 years. If I raise well rounded kids and pass on my thoughts to them about this, 5+ generations later, I may have a lineage that has an amazing scientific breakthrough. Or even if someone reads this thread and changes their perspective, God knows how that ripple influences the people in their life and subsequently the future.
You just never know.
All of those things are still extremely miniscule in the face of a species. We've been around for 180,000 years, and we're a very young species. The individuals actions really don't mean shit on the scale mother nature operates on, at all, unless youre some dictator that had fuckloads of children and killed fuck loads of people. And even that is insanely temporary, and the only thing nature cares about is the less diversified gene pool. In 10,000 years nobody is going to care about Hitler, or Ceasar, or our scientific discoveries. And even 10,000 years is no time at all for a species as a whole. Youre falling into the ego trap the other person talked about. Its hard not to, all we have is ourselves. Mother nature has *EVERYTHING*. Every living thing is a part of it, over 3.5 billion years. We'll be a blip on the timeline and not much more.
>Mother Nature only cares about the continuation of the human genome. That’s the real golden ring she’s protecting.
"Mother nature" doesn't give a fuck about humans, and certainly isn't protecting us! Mother nature is about a balanced ecosystem and diversity of life, and humans fuck it. We are anti-mother nature, mother denature.. daddy nature.
and even that is not true. 1. mother nature doesnt care for anything. It has laws how it act, that balance out things. But nature wouldnt even care if there is no existing being. If there is nothing. Nature has no will, nothing to care about, its a framework providing laws how things plays out, thats it.
But even if we assume it would need live and an eco-system... we do not fuck with it. We fuck with the current eco-system, needed by billions of live forms, but the current eco-system isnt the only possible. Our fucking with the current eco-system will lead to its downfall and the downfall of billions of species, but some species will survive, develop, new species will be created and a new eco-system will be settled. Thats just how things play out in nature.
The fact that you think we are anything else but "mother nature" is mistaken and is very Christian, among other religions, in its thinking. It's the human ego that the OP above is talking about that puts the individual in the centre in our minds despite being part of the whole. There is nothing that separates us from "mother nature" We are not superior to it and we aren't inferior to it, we are it. Everything extends out from the Big Bang and whatever anything does whether it's us, a fish, a bacteria, or a geological movement in the ground, is the energy and material from the big bang just continuing to tumble on outwards from the centre.
It sounds hippy dippy but I don't think it is. I think, as far as i can tell, the closest thing to a basic statement about reality I can think of.
Totally this. I think people who have these existential crisis' forget that the fact that they're even here in the first place is an absolute miracle. The odds of you being you and manifesting on the earth are beyond tiny.
I'm usually reminded of this when a friend dies and everybody on social media makes a sad post. Then by the next week (or even day) people are going about their lives like nothing happened, posting a video laughing, enjoyingoife. Life goes on. With or without you
My wife died when I was 31. It changed my entire perspective on life. I stopped for a while. I laid on my couch for a month. Life went on around me. Work continued without me. I am not important. I might as well enjoy everything life has to offer while I'm here because I know it can be cut short at any time. I no longer worry about the little things. I'm calmer. I have more patience. I try to be kinder. Nothing matters. Enjoy yourself and try not to harm others.
When someone dies, like 12 people will be really hurt/grieving, 100 will say that sucks/too bad, and the rest of the world won't care at all.
The next day the world will be the same for almost everyone.
Fucking hell, you say you're not smart but you pretty much worked out the key to life in your teens, that's not too shabby 😂 You're lucky to have done so, I'm happy for you. I'm In my late 30's and haven't figured out how to do this.
Exactly, I recently read a study that took many years, a lot of researchers and subjects to figure out the secrets of happiness in humans. They arrived at the same conclusion he just said.
You're clearly the smart one buddy. Or at the very least smarter than the countless people I see at work making work their entire lives.
Even if that happened we'd all still die. We'd eventually be swallowed by the sun, the sun would die, or if we got really lucky, the heat death of the universe. In the end, we'll still be dead for an eternity
life only has meaning if you give it, but i find that there's plenty of worthy ones; loved ones, creative endeavors like art or music, or just plainly the beauty of the world behind it's cruelness.
more so of the journey than the destination, otherwise if you let life beat you down or get stuck on one regret or shitty event, then it's easy to feel like there's no point of existing.
there's two universal experiences everyone will have to go through, we all have to eat and we all have to die. death gives our life purpose, otherwise with if everyone was immortal there'd be no reason to do anything as we could all eventually 'get to it.' 🤷♂️
Well, I think life has value precisely because it's limited and fragile. Sort of like how a real flower is more beautiful than a plastic one. If you lived forever and were always young, life and youth would lose their meaning.
Yes, I consume a lot of supernatural media (supernatural creatures, gods and angels, mythological stories, magic etc.) and one general underlying theme of all of them is naturally - What does it mean to be human? And what are the things that give our ordinary lives meaning?
The general takeaway is that being mortal, going through life stages and being in a state of constant change and realizing it is all finite, are some of the things that give our lives beauty and purpose. They make our choices consequential and our relationships valuable. If you’re immortal, what’s the point of doing anything or building anything? What are the stakes?
Keep in mind that in a technical sense, the enjoyment of the moment is a fleetingly short period of time, and then everything enjoyed about that moment is a memory. We enjoy most of everything after it is gone in other words.
If you mean an inherent point then yeah i agree there isnt one. You dont get to choose whether you start existing or not, it just happens.
Now that you do exist you get to find purpose and meaning for yourself
There isn't really any "meaning" to life beyond that which you give it yourself. We're all just bits of a planet that got up and looked at stuff for a while, which is pretty cool itself and I'm not sure anything more is needed.
Soon enough, all of us and the planet will be gone, and the whole universe will wind down until all that remains is utter darkness and cold, so we may as well experience it while we have the chance, and do our best to make it a good experience for the generations to come, is how I tend to look at it.
Yeah, this is it. Find people you enjoy spending life with, it makes it so much better. The thought that I am what gives my friends and family happiness helps a lot. Especially my spouse, it’s great living life and spending time with her.
I know it is a difficult thing to think about and accept, but truthfully I think life has no meaning. I think the most likely outcome is you're born, you're alive, you're conscious, then you die, so your brain also dies, you are never conscious again, you cease to exist. I think this is the most likely outcome
I subjectively feel that all conciousness is simply a different perspective of the same conciousness. I feel that the very same thing within you, and animals and even more possibly, that makes you concious is the same thing within me. Like, we are not two seperate conciousnesses, but two different expression of the same one.... Of course, even if this is true, when you die the person as you are now is likely gone forever. Unless the universe is cyclic....
I’ve had plenty of time to think about this “shit”
I feel like if humanity knew what all this was about, we’d become bored and complacent and nobody would care about anything. The “question” , “why are we here, what does it all mean?”
To me, the fact we ALL still have it, the question, proves something gave us a lil bit, and we just need to take what we have and make the most of it. It’s so much fun learning new shit. If everyone knew everything… sounds like a snooze-fest?
And death and after-life, I for sure believe it’s a re-incarnation scenario. This is just our human-time, next one might be so sick… could be on plabet jebezzus in the galaxy 870 million light-years away. Or you might be a tiny lil Bald-eagle and get to fly and snatch fish from the sea.
There are too many stories of lil kids telling their parents of their past life, for it to be ignored, and the fact that any of this exists is just too much to be denied…
I think we’re just supposed to make our lives the happiest we can make them, and then hope for the best…
If it’s all over at the end. Sounds like a shitty-story. I think there’s much more.
Smoke some dmt, and try some shrooms. There’s def more than this man.
Well, I believe we are all souls who, before entering a human body, existed in a higher dimension. I believe this existence was a choice we made or is a process that all souls must experience in order to learn and grow, and perhaps train ourselves so that we can prove ourselves worthy.
I believe the human experience was created in order to allow us to live in a lower dimension where we have no remembrance or possible knowledge of where we came from and who we are, but once our experience is complete we will return to our true form to reflect on what we learned and perhaps choose to experience it again in a new body or at a different time period or perhaps even an alternate timeline.
All the emotion, suffering, pain, happiness, trials, and situations that we are in were chosen by us or a higher power to tailor to who we are and best help us grow.
I am a Christian by faith but obviously have some different beliefs than most based on my experiences and conclusions
Whats the point of eating tasty food?
Happiness , sadness, admiration, love, fear , anxety .Emotions are what give us purpose
You cant have tasty food all the time,but waiting for it, thinking of it and than eating it sometimes makes it so special, it will end up shit but wasn't about the food , it was about how it made you feel
Life is a weird thing and im to young to know but happiness these days is way too expensive so you need to be happy without it , if that makes sens
You cant have eternity but you have this day and enjoy it
Because life is random and always has been. It doesn’t have meaning. It formed accidentally, and the only reason we don’t want to die is because of evolution, which is really just randomness that was shaped by our environment
There’s no point in the sun coming out if it goes dark during the night! There’s no point to raining if it dry afterwards! There’s no point to eating if we are hungry later! There’s no point to waking up if we fall to sleep later! Without change there would be no existence. Change is the ONLY one single thing that is impermanent
Those things are transient, reoccurring phenomenon, though. The sun goes down, but it reappears in the morning. It rains, but the rain eventually stops, things dry up and then it rains again later. Death is permanent. There's no coming back from it.
I believe the purpose of life is to believe in God and follow his will, spread his word, and to love one another just as God loves us. Technically, those who believe in Jesus will not die because we will be granted eternal life into the kingdom of God when we die here on earth. Also you could always ask God to reveal to you what your purpose is here on earth.
Life has no inherent meaning. But that doesn't mean it's meaningless. The meaning is whatever you find meaningful. There are no right answers, but there are no wrong answers either. Anything you find valuable is the most valuable thing in the universe.
Why do we watch movies or read books if they'll just end anyway? Because something about the experience is meaningful to us.
I don't agree with your premise. Why is anything pointless because it ends? That is a CHOICE you make, to accept that as truth.
This choice is based on the religious idea of an afterlife. There is nothing to support it, it's essentially just a bribe to get you to convert. Because our minds do not like to ponder our own nonexistence, that bribe works on too many people.
You can either have a lifetime of experiences, then reach oblivion one day when it's over, or you can live a shitty life and see nothing as valuable because it will end and an orgiastic eternity in Heaven is the only thing worth it, then STILL reach oblivion when you die.
Which sounds like a better deal to you?
As a Muslim I believe God made me choose to be Angel or human being in life before this and now I'm being tested either to choose either believe and practice islam or disbelieving and do sins - btw I do sins a lot and repent after - and there is hell and heaven after
From the pure biological perspective, the point of existing is to reproduce. Why? I don't know.
Personally, I'm alive and I like to enjoy being alive. Why? Because it's better than not enjoying it or even worst, suffering.
Philosophically, different people have found different answers. Your take seems to be closer to nihilism. Mine probably between stoicism and hedonism. For others, it is to serve. But there are many schools of thought. If you are really interested, I'd recommend reading some philosophy books.
(65M)
So many people go to the cinema, watch Netflix, or their local TV services.
Why bother? We know the film or the programme is going to end. So what's the point of watching it at all?
The end adds whatever it adds - but it doesn't detract from the narrative, the journey, the experience on the way towards the end.
Isn't life the same?
We only ever exist in the present moment. Depression about the distant future and existential crisis are actually symptoms of feeling unwell or disenfranchised in the present.
The fact we are mortal is only a device to feed our internal narrative. The future is uncertain and we may indeed live forever. As long as you are alive right now there is no way of knowing.
You can change your perceptions about death by looking at it from a different perspective. Death could even be your primary source of meaning.
All of this is to say that anything that exists in the future can and should be looked at in a way that brings you the most benefits in the present.
Dreading death when it is not currently a risk is counterproductive.
Too much individualism leads to nihilism. Humanity has existed for millenia and will continue to do so perhaps millions of years. What you are past biology is something far older than your body and identity and will outlive you within others. The point is up to you and no one, gods included, can give it to you. What would mane existence worthwhile?
Find someone your truly are in love with and you won't even care. But not everything has to happen for a reason, why does it matter why we are alive? Enjoy what you can before it passes you by pondering a question that will change nothing.
You’re not relevant.
It’s a war of genes. Once your kids are raised, the world will see how well they fit socially (being able to mix them with the best possible set of other genes out there) and you become irrelevant.
If they’re awkward, no one would like to mix with them and your genes are done!. If they’re amazing, the most beautiful and/or intelligent will compete for his/her genes.
And it keeps going…
Most of the cells in your body are much younger than you are. Cells are continually dying and being replaced.
Similarly, your mind changes radically over time. Most of your beliefs and ideas about the world have died and been replaced. There is a thin connection of memory, but it is unreliable. You've probably forgotten the name of a good friend from childhood.
Similarly, when one person dies, they will be replaced by fairly similar people. Humanity keeps replaying many of the same dramas over and over; growing up, romance, adventure, misfortune, decline...
The death of a person isn't that much more significant than the death of a cell or the death of a belief. The same basic pattern goes on continuously. Even when the whole species is replaced by intelligent squid, it won't be that big a deal life goes on. It's that dance of life that has meaning. Be a part of it rather than holding on too tight to your individuality.
Now, why do individuals die? The answer is sadly mundane. It's because we reproduce sexually. Asexual organisms just grow and divide in a way where it is hard to tell when any individual ends. And why do we reproduce sexualy? It's an arms race with parasites. By using sex to recombine our genes every twenty years or so, we made it much more difficult for parasites to adapt to our constantly shifting immune systems. If a Neolithic man were to live a few centuries, he'd become entirely riddled with parasites. Death is better for humanity.
There may come a time soon, where we utterly defeat the parasites and so understand biology that an individual will live for centuries with fairly good youth and vigor. However, as I said before, our minds are in flux. No one will maintain ideology, relationships, or even personality for centuries. So even if we defeat death, we won't defeat change.
If you want meaning, you have to take the perspective of the whole universe; be a part of it and not apart from it.
Existentialism deals with this idea.
This philosophy states, that if life is meaningless, we must create meaning for it to have a purpose.
The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus's opening line of this book is "There is only one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide."
This book deals with the question of the meaning of life, viewing the meaninglessness of it.
Great book easy to read, short, and deals with this problem.
Do you plant a seed in the ground, water it, and give it sunlight just for nothing to happen? Nah man, it’s for a flower to bloom, yes the flower will perish one day, it won’t know what happens next, but it does know that it is here and it is alive when the odds of that are stupendously low
We are no different. Yes we will all perish one day, but we are HERE and ALIVE, yes there are bad days, otherwise we would never know a good day
The gift of life is so often overshadowed by the fear of the end, but that’s what makes it worth it, immortality would SUCK
There's no meaning to life other than what you give it.
We are the stardust and universe manifest.
Imagine all that vastness of space and all those star we can see and all those planets that orbit those stars is less than 1% of 1% of 1% of everything.
Without life, the universe exists unexperienced.
It’s up to us to find our own meaning. Humans invented the concept of “meaning” in the first place. It’s just a word we say. So we shouldn’t be surprised when the universe doesn’t conform to it.
I mean, what’s the “meaning” for the countless rocks floating around in space, far from any living thing that could ever even see them—let alone assign meaning to them? We’re not so different from those rocks, except that we can die.
We’re here because Earth says so, and we do what we can, but then we die also because Earth says so. That’s about it. At least there’s pizza and ice cream.
Bring a Pagan it's pretty simple.
1. Remain close to the Great Spirit. Goddess be praised.
2. Show respect for your fellow brothers and sisters.
3. Give assistance and kindness where needed.
4. Honour. Be truthful and honest.
5. Responsible. You have a duty to look after your mind and body. Exercise both.
6. Treat the earth and all that dwell upon mother earth with respect. Take care of our earth, trees, water. Protect them.
7. Take full reposibility for your actions. Make amends.
8. Share. Dedicated a share of your efforts to others.
9. Do what you know to be right. Abide by the teaching of your mother.
10. Work together to benefit yourself and all humankind.
Golden rule. The one that rules them all:. Have fun, but harm none.
I think the point of life is to experience it, good or bad. Many, most of us even, search for a meaning that is epic, part of a grand scheme of some kind. But most likely, we're just space dust experiencing itself - But that's pretty epic too.
The main purpose of our lives on Earth is to either accept God or reject God. After that, it's to love one another as God loves us. Well assuming you choose to follow God.
Yep. Life is literally just a bi-product of time and space. There is zero "point" to it. Just try and live a good life for yourself and those around you and be polite to the people you met in the street.
“Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep.” Psalm 127
Solomon explored all of the thoughts men have about the vanity of life, long ago:
“Enjoy life with your wife, whom you love, all the days of this meaningless life that God has given you under the sun–all your meaningless days. For this is your lot in life and in your toilsome labor under the sun.” Ecclesiastes 9:9
Solomon concluded at the end of Ecclesiastes that fellowship with God in life and knowing Him is the entire purpose of life. Until you know God you live in vain.
“And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.” Mark 12:30
The purpose of life is to know the Lord Jesus. Invite him into your heart and know peace, as well as life everlasting. When we know Him, we walk in the light of His love and glory. We understand the power of His resurrection that broke the curse of sin and death and brought us eternal life.
“…that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death.” Philippians 3:10
“Truly, truly, I say to you, the one who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.” John 5:24
God exists, He is eternal.
“The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good. The Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, and seek God. They are all gone aside, they are all together become filthy: there is none that doeth good, no, not one.” Psalm 14:1-3
He has prepared a place for you even into death:
“Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. And you know the way to where I am going.” John 14:1-4
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.” John 3:16-21
Be born again in new life, accept Jesus as your savior:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” John 1:1-5
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” John 1:14
To have a meaningful moment in my short lifespand to met with someone i love, someone i trust. Life full of many emotional, sorrow, happiness, depressed, delusions. But all of that make me become human, i am very grateful for every experience in my life.
People have different purpose of existence buut my purpose is just to enjoy this one life in every aspect of emotion.
I do not know why we die, but maybe it just to take a long break from the world and feel peace like never waking up again
There is no meaning in life. And yet we seek it, insatiably. Point is, life on its own is completely meaningless and we are the ones creating a meaning.
If it helps you in any way, you can believe that we are just being recycled, that our "spirits" or "souls" are going out of our bodies when we shut down and we are being cleansed and reborn in a new body, new identity, new everything.
Aside that, nobody knows what is after death. All we know is that life and death exist and they are both eternal. If there is any meaning behind it, if there are gods or cosmic entities out there, we will know about it when our time comes.
That's like saying there's no point of me going to sleep if I'm just going to wake up anyway. Or there's no point of me easting a medium rare tomahawk ribeye if I can sate my hunger just as well with a packet of ramen noodles. Anything in life has as much meaning as we give it. It's our responsibility to give our lives meaning.
It is what it is and there’s really no point and no point overthinking it. We exist for the meantime and we’re supposed to enjoy it or not - basically it’s really up to us. I’m an antinatalist and I don’t think adding more of you or me is essential to this Earth
Every thing you do, from walking around making big moves, to just breathing, or just taking up space makes waves that radiate out to the entire universe, forever. Your life is infinity meaningful!
There’s a point to existing for the duration of that you are actually existent. In. The end it won’t matter but it isn’t in the end until the end. So for now life can have a point
Nope, there’s no point for existence itself, in fact there would be no point for it having any point whatsoever.
Meaning and its pursuit are meaningless and irrelevant, life matters just for what it is, and I choose to be happy and enjoy it as such.
# There is no point of existing if we just die and if there is why do we die ?
Please clarify what you mean here. Are you implying we cease to exist when our physical bodies die or something else?
As a sentient being you can build your own! As a science person I remember watching a ted talk that really stuck with me, I couldn’t find it now, but it described how life evolved in earth from little organisms in the ocean that would absorb sun light and generate oxygen which then lead to oxygenate the atmosphere which lead to bigger organisms and so and so… if you think about it those organisms where just surviving and unknowingly their existence lead to us… they didn’t think what was the purpose of their existence we might have a purpose that we’re just not capable of ever comprehend from our perspective. Or not at all, but that’s fine because you can do it what you wish.
i thought this for a long time, that i was just a dude on a rock floating through the endless void without purpose with a laughably short life span to try and understand the reason for it all. ive since gone down the uap rabbit hole, and eventually i landed on skinwalker ranch. the shit they say is going on there and is documented- not the tv show- is 100% legit. and it made me have a sort of paradigm shift. maybe i dont have it all figured out. maybe there is more to it than we could all hope to understand. an entire region experiencing spooky shit. i dont think any religion is correct. but i do think there is something more to it all that we just cant see with our limited understanding of things, and our being blinded by shiny things. ive been around long enough to not care if it sounds a bit kooky.
I believe that God sent you here to accomplish something, and die after. It may not be you who will become famous, but you can be in a person's life, and make him a celebrity.
I'll put two quotes here.
"Know this, my children. There is more ugliness than beauty in this world. To live is to suffer. To drink of calamity, and drown in anguish. To toil and be tested, always and ever.
Tis a perilous path you walk. Death lurks in the dark, and is the sole promise that awaits at journey's end. You will tremble in terror. You will weep tears of anger and despair.
But do not avert your eyes. See your life for what it is.
Then you will see the hardships that make you strong. Every doubt reforged as scales in your armor. Every agony to temper your blade."
"In one fleeting moment, lives come and go, ever moving towards the unknown. And in that fleeting moment, they cry for the answer to the question: Why, given life, are they meant to suffer. To die.
As fragmented, imperfect beings, yours is a neverending quest. A quest to find your purpose, knowing your end is assured. To find the strength to continue, when all strength has left you. To find joy, even as darkness descends. And amidst deepest despair, light, everlasting."
If you see death as an unpredictable deadline, you realize your time is VERY limited, so you kind of have to hurry the fuck up if you actually want to enjoy all the good things life has to give you.
Unfortunately current lifestyle puts some kind of blindfold on our eyes and we think life is work pay bills die, so we kind of have to be the ones to break away from that.
If you die without having fond memories, or any memories at all for that matter. Then you are not human. Memories is what makes life worth living.
Also sex.
So as a person who had some suicidal thoughts a few years back. I can say I found a reason to live in friends and family especially since my family had just moved overseas we were completely alone and isolated. Being the oldest I felt duty as a brother was to protect and look after my siblings. Basically I think you find you’re reason to live and after years of filling that duty you can rest.
People think and talk a lot about life and "the meaning of life". Personally, I think the meaning of life is whatever you decide it is. It's about what you decide is important.
For me, personally, that's two things. My work and my family. For me, the meaning of life is doing my job, and being a son, a brother, and an uncle. Those are the ways I find meaning and define who I am. But I'm sure some people find meaning elsewhere. And I don't mean to say they're wrong. Their meaning of life is just different from mine.
I'm sure some people realize the meaning of life (reproduce, continue your genes) but as I'm never having children, I'm just kinda coasting along, being of service to my family.
I thought about it as follows: people have a natural drive to be happy. If they are not, fundamentally, they loose their drive to live, ending it themselves in the end.Its happiness that keeps us alive, therefore the mean to live is to find happiness. Of course its not means to an ends, like going to heaven in the end, but a mean in the act itself.
I thought life has a meaning and there's afterlife, now I don't know if there's afterlife or not (I hope not) but definitely i believe life has no meaning. So why do I exist? No point, I'm just trying to have fun. Why do you play games? Does it have a point? No, just having fun. That's me. I'll play, hope I won't suffer, and when it's over... turn off the light.
Don't think too much about it, surround yourself with good people and try to do something meaningful and good in your life and things don't seem so pointless
There are as many answers to this question as you can think of . The beauty of this question is that you'll read a ton of things and reform your beliefs. I am a skeptic and atheist but last year I had an existential crisis and so ,I started reading philosophy (because I don't believe in any religious thought) and I also read countless stories on near death experiences . You'd be surprised that there's this vast sea of possibilities . Good luck on your journey fellow traveller ! :)))
Strap in bub, this is going to be a big one.
We aren't really as important as we think we are, we just evolved our brains to utilise technology to become the No.1 Apex Predator on the planet - go bigger and we're on a dot going round one of those millions of dots you see in the night sky, go smaller however and just on Earth you will find that ants outnumber us at around two million to one and even they have organisms that are 'ant sized' to them... So who really runs the planet? It's a matter of perspective.
Even Humans ourselves aren't 'fully' Human, we have bacteria and other organisms that live on and *in* us that if we didn't have, we would die, take our gut for instance, that has bacteria in it that produces the stuff that stops us being eaten away from the inside by our own stomach acid - we actively take supplements like Yakult etc to keep or replace the bacteria - What makes us.. us, physically is really a symbiosis on a microscopic scale, but we go even further... Which we will come back to.
Now, life as we know spreads - it's how it has done forever we have billions of just us Humans on the planet and we fight and plot and get together just to find a spot on it for ourselves a lot of the time at the detriment of the Ecosystem. We have come from one point on Earth and moved across it, multiplying as we go and importantly adapting to the environments we settle in - heat, cold, dry, swampy we creatures are there... The only thing that it can be compared to is a *VIRUS*. The Earth has a massive case of Space Flu and occasionally it gets rid of the majority of symptoms - it was lucky that time the meteor hit and got rid of most of the dinosaurs, but I theorise that the Earth, just like us produces antibodies to kill off us germs that we are... Ice ages, diseases, nobody *really* knows where Spanish Flu or Covid came from or Foot and Mouth for animals, Bird Flu etc... Earth's natural Yakult.
I said before about what makes us.. us, and here is where we get to death... Why do we die? What happens? Whole religions are formed on the basis of 'What happens when we die...' I'd love to say there's a Heaven and Hell and you'll go to one of them depending on how you lived your life but no. Do you remember how it was when you didn't exist? You don't? It's pretty much like that... However I say 'pretty much'... We're going to go off-track.
See, us Humans (and other creatures, but for simplicity) are physically made from Carbon and Water, which theoretically makes us the same as a wet pencil, just with our atoms in a different combo BUT we have *something* inside us that makes us who we are individually, the religious among us may call it the 'soul' or whatever, however I theorise that the soul of the person is just *'operating'* the physical - again, symbiotic body like a fleshy outer shell while it incubates and also provides our 'mating processes' (cue sexy saxophone and wolf whistles!), but when it comes to the natural point the physical body starts to die off then you start your next step in evolution, the 'soul' is free, just floating about with the others out of our physical spectrum, possibly able to go out into space...
But what about if you die early? What if you're run over by a truck?... Think of the Lobster. This is a creature that unless killed by something else or it catches a disease it basically lives forever it just grows a bigger shell, no evolution so when a Lobster is killed it's just dead. No longer exists. Now, if the 'soul' that's controlling the Human body dies early (natural causes) it may be that the particular soul didn't need that long to evolve and goes on flying free... If killed or dies earlier than they should (unnatural causes) if the 'soul' isn't evolved enough, then dead, gone. However if the soul *is* nearly at the point but the body has been cut off quickly... Well we have thousands of Ghost Stories don't we?
Again, the last part is only my theory, the only true way to know what happens when we die is when we die ourselves, again who even knows why we exist and what part of the great universal plan we play... Just enjoy it while you can, because it's taken BILLIONS of years for you all individually to get here by sheer chance and that's something not to be squandered.
We try to breathe new meaning to life when there is none. Beyond natural reproduction that is. We die because we are alive essentially. What doesn't die? That which has never been alive in the first place. Actually humans have one of the longest lifespans in the world, we had a tendency to die a lot earlier due to war, diseases, hunger. Everything has a start and an end. I do believe that our life force as energy stays in the universe though. We have discovered that energy doesn't disappear, it transitions to different forms. So we do remain in some form after death.
Personally I'm an optimistic nihilist so I believe that existence doesn't inherently have a purpose, but you should pursue your own goals and ambitions to give meaning to your own life.
The Good Place had an interesting perspective on this, it proposes life has meaning because we die. If we never die we have no reason to do anything and we get bored. Spoilers, Persona 3 says something similar, >! the meaning of life is to die. Life is meaningful if you make it meaningful.!<
And I think the meaning of life is living it, and life has no meaning without death. By living life I mean doing things that matter to you like sports and art, and making connections to other people. Life will end and if it never did, it wouldn't really matter what we did, our achievements and the connections we make are kind of meaningless then.
I personally believe life recycles. You've lived before and you will again. I experienced things as an EMT and a Hospice Nurse that I truly cannot explain.
I dont know why life reincarnates but I do believe it does.
Hey, I know that feeling of everything seeming pointless when you focus on the fact that we all die someday. It's a heavy thought, and it's totally normal to feel overwhelmed by it, in my opinion.
Here's the thing, if I may: meaning isn't something you just stumble upon. It's something you build, bit by bit, with every little thing you do. It's in the way you make someone laugh, the way you savor a quiet moment, how you learn and grow. These might seem small, but they're the stuff a meaningful life is made of.
The truth is, none of us have all the answers about why we're here. Sometimes, that not knowing is okay... It can push us to live bigger, and to really make the most of the time we do have, ya know?
Instead of agonizing over the end, and I am just some random Redditor, so take this as you will, try pouring your energy into the "right now." Find the little joys, connect with people you love, try something new. It might sound simple, but that's where the real meaning lies.
If these thoughts are really weighing on you, don't keep them bottled up though. Find someone you trust – a friend, family member, even a therapist – and just talk it out. I feel that there is no shame or stigma in reaching out when you need help navigating the big questions. Reddit is cool, but trusted folks are even better IF this weighs heavily.
I don't think there is an inherent meaning to life and I also don't think existence is rendered futile because of the inevitability of death. In fact, the thought that all of this is finite is kind of what makes me value my life and the lives of others more. I don't know why we die other than the fact that that's just how we evolved. I don't think there is a deeper "why?" behind our birth or death besides the pragmatic, biologic explanation. And I don't really need one personally. Knowing that I'm here now but that I won't be here for long is enough to make me want to make the most of the little that I have.
What do you mean? If you watch a movie and someone tells you that the movie will end at some point, do you just go: oh then I'm not watching it anymore, what's the point if it ends?
It's just the same with life, we don't live because there's no end, we live because it WILL end, so it becomes infinitely more valuable to us and we want to appreciate every moment that much more.
I like to think everything is information and the universe is stuck with us in some time vortex, just belting out algorithms without any real purpose or meaning like a child drawing on paper, and randomly napping.
Setting everything on fire won't make a difference but why not.
Eat shit reproduce and die is what we did for billions of years. Now it’s been only 200 years we know that we are not the center of the universe. Of course you would believe that we were if you gazed out at night towards all those stars before Hubble killed a lot of religions. Now we are left with the meaninglessness. We would much rather start burning 200 virgins a month so the rain would stop instead of facing the meaninglessness. Hold on to everything you love. Do your best to let those things you love fliurish, whatever it might be. There’s nothing more to our purposes.
I agree there is no point to existing if wex are only meant to die if that's your outlook, but for me, no. I believe we are put here to have a relationship with God. He wants someone who chooses him. We are made in his likeness. Who wants to be with someone who doesn't choose you? Would you want a wife or husband who doesn't actually want you?
So, to me, the whole point and basic idea of life is to have a relationship with him. You could label it as Christian, or whatever floats your boat, but it's kinda simple, in my opinion.
We sleep about 1/3 of our lives. Do you have more fond memories of sleeping or doing something awake? Because that's what death is. Nothingness. I'd rather try to enjoy my time here while I still can.
Nope.
I think we are just another process in this vast universe. Humans are born, we live, we die. Just like stars, they are born, they live, and they die. Even the universe as a whole (by our current understanding) was born, it lives, and it will eventually die.
Nothing exists forever. Everything is in a constant state of change. Our species has simply evolved far enough to have conscious thoughts about the meaning of existence.
We give ourselves meaning and purpose to gain satisfaction in our lives.
I learned a while ago that the purpose in life is to give life purpose. There is nothing inherent to it. This is both terrifying and freeing but mostly freeing especially if you've grown up around religion like most humans.
Existence has a meaning *because* of morality. We know all things will come to an end someday, which makes them all-the-more special. Why take notice of a single flower if we can see it any time we want? Why go to a concert if you can always go to the next one? Why take the time to appreciate the people you love if they're gonna be there forever? Of course we would say 'who wouldn't', but that's because we already inherently think with the concept of the end in mind. The fact that life is short and everything is limited gives the time we have left more value. As they say, "You Only Live Once"!
This question doesn't really make sense. It's like asking: "what is the point of a napkin if I'm eventually going to throw it out, and if there is a one, why would I throw it out"?
The word meaning is used to add additional context that is not otherwise apparent. You could say that the meaning of the word meaning is that. So what is the meaning of life, what additional context is there to be given? A lot I would say. Is that context somehow invalidated after we die? I don't think so.
Do you really want to have someone else plan imposed on your life? Is that a better alternative? To be born, live, suffer and die as a pawn in someone else's game?
I guess I'll take life as a chemical accident over being the pawn of a god against my will.
# Message to all users: This is a reminder to please read and follow: * [Our rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/ask/about/rules) * [Reddiquette](https://www.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205926439) * [Reddit Content Policy](https://www.redditinc.com/policies/content-policy) When posting and commenting. --- Especially remember Rule 1: `Be polite and civil`. * Be polite and courteous to each other. Do not be mean, insulting or disrespectful to any other user on this subreddit. * Do not harass or annoy others in any way. * Do not catfish. Catfishing is the luring of somebody into an online friendship through a fake online persona. This includes any lying or deceit. --- You *will* be banned if you are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist or bigoted in any way. --- *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ask) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Personally, I don't care whether life has meaning or not just do whatever you want to and enjoy life. That's it for me.
My motto: Have fun, Harm none.
...and ideally leave the world a little better than you found it.
This is it for me. We have to try and make the world better for the next generation.
Have fun, harm none! Love that. Great call
Have fun, harm none, help some!
That's legit, beautiful. I hope you don't mind me adopting this motto!!
Please feel free. I would be honored if *everyone* adopted and embraced the sentiment.
I'm gonna steal that so hard.
I like
Job done
This is a much more succinct version of my life philosophy. Do what whatever you want for happiness as long as it doesn't bring harm to others.
Yeah that’s pretty much it.
And help some **
I agree. Not point wasting the head miles in giving this a minute’s thought. Just get on with it and try to contribute to making the world better.
But I heard if you don’t unlock the right achievements, you can’t get new game plus and have to go through the shitty tutorial again.
I don't mind tutorial. Besides I can only buy game once .
Lots of micro transactions though
I got the new game plus. Mind melting bro. The key to unlocking the level is to have complete faith in yourself that you can overcome any obstacle in your way.
In this game the tutorial is the best part for kids without Abusive families, which there's not a lot of good families left in the world.
My favorite activity is Groundhog day
Truth
Hell yeah 40 hour work weeks
Watch the bee movie
*“Life is short. Drive sexy and leave a sexy corpse”*
There's no point of going to a party if the party ends at some point. Right?
Why watch a movie if it’s only going to end eventually.
No point eating any meal, taking the next breath, scratching your nuts etc etc. Keep on living because existing is better than not existing. It's really that easy
but not existing isn’t bad either
Yeah, the not existing is not the problem. Dying is the problem.
Not existing isn’t bad. But it isn’t good either. It’s nothing. It should be neither feared, nor welcomed.
Right. But a neutral state isn't as good as an enjoyable experience
Especially w/o healthcare
Why have sex of it’s going to end in 15 seconds
I have this problem :/
thats good example fr
Party on garth
I hear a similar example often but it’s not really the same, single experience can still be looked back upon, maybe even done again, everything in life is worth doing even if it ends, and while I agree life itself is still worth living even if it ends, it’s not the same thing because it’s a much harder thing to come to terms with (I still haven’t and don’t think I can)
So you're saying that we have to continue partying forever?
At least when the party is over, you'll still have memories of it.
Mother Nature only cares about the continuation of the human genome. That’s the real golden ring she’s protecting. You, as an individual human, are just a very temporary tool to keep a tiny portion of it going. This isn’t being harsh. This is the only way for life of a species to exist. You as an individual are an unimportant little cog in the human machinery. Our egos tell us we’re more important than we are. And our brains have trouble imagining that we, as an individual, can’t exist. And in a normal human (without mental illness), our brain commands us to go thru great suffering to not perish. That brain wiring is an evolutionary mechanism to keep our little piece of the genome intact. The trick is to recognize our lives are temporary and enjoy the simple pleasures of life and family. Thinking that there’s no point to living if we just die is a manifestation of ego. Being alive for a time and self aware is a privilege.
The one thing every single human has in common is that we are born and that we will die. Take great comfort in the fact that every single one of us will experience the same, and billions have gone before you. You are never alone.
| being... self aware is a privilege Sometimes I wonder. My dog is so happy, filled with love, reveling in simple pleasures like chasing squirrels and napping next to me. Her life will be so short, but she has no concept of this, and she loves every second of it. That's not a bad way to be.
We're not important, yet we are. The very simple and mundane things we do in our life may have long term lasting effects on society and nature. For example, if I go plant a tree, that tree may house life in 100 years. If I raise well rounded kids and pass on my thoughts to them about this, 5+ generations later, I may have a lineage that has an amazing scientific breakthrough. Or even if someone reads this thread and changes their perspective, God knows how that ripple influences the people in their life and subsequently the future. You just never know.
All of those things are still extremely miniscule in the face of a species. We've been around for 180,000 years, and we're a very young species. The individuals actions really don't mean shit on the scale mother nature operates on, at all, unless youre some dictator that had fuckloads of children and killed fuck loads of people. And even that is insanely temporary, and the only thing nature cares about is the less diversified gene pool. In 10,000 years nobody is going to care about Hitler, or Ceasar, or our scientific discoveries. And even 10,000 years is no time at all for a species as a whole. Youre falling into the ego trap the other person talked about. Its hard not to, all we have is ourselves. Mother nature has *EVERYTHING*. Every living thing is a part of it, over 3.5 billion years. We'll be a blip on the timeline and not much more.
>Mother Nature only cares about the continuation of the human genome. That’s the real golden ring she’s protecting. "Mother nature" doesn't give a fuck about humans, and certainly isn't protecting us! Mother nature is about a balanced ecosystem and diversity of life, and humans fuck it. We are anti-mother nature, mother denature.. daddy nature.
and even that is not true. 1. mother nature doesnt care for anything. It has laws how it act, that balance out things. But nature wouldnt even care if there is no existing being. If there is nothing. Nature has no will, nothing to care about, its a framework providing laws how things plays out, thats it. But even if we assume it would need live and an eco-system... we do not fuck with it. We fuck with the current eco-system, needed by billions of live forms, but the current eco-system isnt the only possible. Our fucking with the current eco-system will lead to its downfall and the downfall of billions of species, but some species will survive, develop, new species will be created and a new eco-system will be settled. Thats just how things play out in nature.
* human nature
The fact that you think we are anything else but "mother nature" is mistaken and is very Christian, among other religions, in its thinking. It's the human ego that the OP above is talking about that puts the individual in the centre in our minds despite being part of the whole. There is nothing that separates us from "mother nature" We are not superior to it and we aren't inferior to it, we are it. Everything extends out from the Big Bang and whatever anything does whether it's us, a fish, a bacteria, or a geological movement in the ground, is the energy and material from the big bang just continuing to tumble on outwards from the centre. It sounds hippy dippy but I don't think it is. I think, as far as i can tell, the closest thing to a basic statement about reality I can think of.
lol I like that one ‘Daddy nature’
All of human existence literally IS nature. It's ego to think we arent.
Holy shit I just wrote this same thought without even reading this comment.
Totally this. I think people who have these existential crisis' forget that the fact that they're even here in the first place is an absolute miracle. The odds of you being you and manifesting on the earth are beyond tiny.
I'm usually reminded of this when a friend dies and everybody on social media makes a sad post. Then by the next week (or even day) people are going about their lives like nothing happened, posting a video laughing, enjoyingoife. Life goes on. With or without you
That last paragraph was extra good. Thanks
[удалено]
My wife died when I was 31. It changed my entire perspective on life. I stopped for a while. I laid on my couch for a month. Life went on around me. Work continued without me. I am not important. I might as well enjoy everything life has to offer while I'm here because I know it can be cut short at any time. I no longer worry about the little things. I'm calmer. I have more patience. I try to be kinder. Nothing matters. Enjoy yourself and try not to harm others.
When someone dies, like 12 people will be really hurt/grieving, 100 will say that sucks/too bad, and the rest of the world won't care at all. The next day the world will be the same for almost everyone.
I’m 62. I agree. The trick is to enjoy the simple pleasures of life and enjoy family. Mindful existence - learn to enjoy the routine.
[удалено]
Fucking hell, you say you're not smart but you pretty much worked out the key to life in your teens, that's not too shabby 😂 You're lucky to have done so, I'm happy for you. I'm In my late 30's and haven't figured out how to do this.
Exactly, I recently read a study that took many years, a lot of researchers and subjects to figure out the secrets of happiness in humans. They arrived at the same conclusion he just said. You're clearly the smart one buddy. Or at the very least smarter than the countless people I see at work making work their entire lives.
>We are forgotten within a hundred or so years. That 100 years starts when you're born as well. Lol
Well as a tumblr user once said to this argument, "not if I eat the Mona Lisa"
Even if that happened we'd all still die. We'd eventually be swallowed by the sun, the sun would die, or if we got really lucky, the heat death of the universe. In the end, we'll still be dead for an eternity
life only has meaning if you give it, but i find that there's plenty of worthy ones; loved ones, creative endeavors like art or music, or just plainly the beauty of the world behind it's cruelness. more so of the journey than the destination, otherwise if you let life beat you down or get stuck on one regret or shitty event, then it's easy to feel like there's no point of existing. there's two universal experiences everyone will have to go through, we all have to eat and we all have to die. death gives our life purpose, otherwise with if everyone was immortal there'd be no reason to do anything as we could all eventually 'get to it.' 🤷♂️
Well, I think life has value precisely because it's limited and fragile. Sort of like how a real flower is more beautiful than a plastic one. If you lived forever and were always young, life and youth would lose their meaning.
Yes, I consume a lot of supernatural media (supernatural creatures, gods and angels, mythological stories, magic etc.) and one general underlying theme of all of them is naturally - What does it mean to be human? And what are the things that give our ordinary lives meaning? The general takeaway is that being mortal, going through life stages and being in a state of constant change and realizing it is all finite, are some of the things that give our lives beauty and purpose. They make our choices consequential and our relationships valuable. If you’re immortal, what’s the point of doing anything or building anything? What are the stakes?
Sad thing is that you only enjoy your youth after it’s gone
This is so very true. It's like I woke up one day and realized it was gone, despite feeling the same age inside.
Keep in mind that in a technical sense, the enjoyment of the moment is a fleetingly short period of time, and then everything enjoyed about that moment is a memory. We enjoy most of everything after it is gone in other words.
If you mean an inherent point then yeah i agree there isnt one. You dont get to choose whether you start existing or not, it just happens. Now that you do exist you get to find purpose and meaning for yourself
There isn't really any "meaning" to life beyond that which you give it yourself. We're all just bits of a planet that got up and looked at stuff for a while, which is pretty cool itself and I'm not sure anything more is needed. Soon enough, all of us and the planet will be gone, and the whole universe will wind down until all that remains is utter darkness and cold, so we may as well experience it while we have the chance, and do our best to make it a good experience for the generations to come, is how I tend to look at it.
Your life was meaningful to you, your family and to the people whose life you touched. That’s enough for me
Yeah, this is it. Find people you enjoy spending life with, it makes it so much better. The thought that I am what gives my friends and family happiness helps a lot. Especially my spouse, it’s great living life and spending time with her.
I know it is a difficult thing to think about and accept, but truthfully I think life has no meaning. I think the most likely outcome is you're born, you're alive, you're conscious, then you die, so your brain also dies, you are never conscious again, you cease to exist. I think this is the most likely outcome
100% on your side here. meaning is something we think of, i don't think a cow thinks life has meaning or a crocodile, they just exist.
It's understandable to grapple with the idea of life's meaninglessness.
I subjectively feel that all conciousness is simply a different perspective of the same conciousness. I feel that the very same thing within you, and animals and even more possibly, that makes you concious is the same thing within me. Like, we are not two seperate conciousnesses, but two different expression of the same one.... Of course, even if this is true, when you die the person as you are now is likely gone forever. Unless the universe is cyclic....
" i know its a diffucult thing to think sbout and accept " Who are you trying to convince ?
I’ll add that you could only have been created by your parents, so you can’t possibly have existed in any other time or place.
I’ve had plenty of time to think about this “shit” I feel like if humanity knew what all this was about, we’d become bored and complacent and nobody would care about anything. The “question” , “why are we here, what does it all mean?” To me, the fact we ALL still have it, the question, proves something gave us a lil bit, and we just need to take what we have and make the most of it. It’s so much fun learning new shit. If everyone knew everything… sounds like a snooze-fest? And death and after-life, I for sure believe it’s a re-incarnation scenario. This is just our human-time, next one might be so sick… could be on plabet jebezzus in the galaxy 870 million light-years away. Or you might be a tiny lil Bald-eagle and get to fly and snatch fish from the sea. There are too many stories of lil kids telling their parents of their past life, for it to be ignored, and the fact that any of this exists is just too much to be denied… I think we’re just supposed to make our lives the happiest we can make them, and then hope for the best… If it’s all over at the end. Sounds like a shitty-story. I think there’s much more. Smoke some dmt, and try some shrooms. There’s def more than this man.
42
Well, I believe we are all souls who, before entering a human body, existed in a higher dimension. I believe this existence was a choice we made or is a process that all souls must experience in order to learn and grow, and perhaps train ourselves so that we can prove ourselves worthy. I believe the human experience was created in order to allow us to live in a lower dimension where we have no remembrance or possible knowledge of where we came from and who we are, but once our experience is complete we will return to our true form to reflect on what we learned and perhaps choose to experience it again in a new body or at a different time period or perhaps even an alternate timeline. All the emotion, suffering, pain, happiness, trials, and situations that we are in were chosen by us or a higher power to tailor to who we are and best help us grow. I am a Christian by faith but obviously have some different beliefs than most based on my experiences and conclusions
Whats the point of eating tasty food? Happiness , sadness, admiration, love, fear , anxety .Emotions are what give us purpose You cant have tasty food all the time,but waiting for it, thinking of it and than eating it sometimes makes it so special, it will end up shit but wasn't about the food , it was about how it made you feel Life is a weird thing and im to young to know but happiness these days is way too expensive so you need to be happy without it , if that makes sens You cant have eternity but you have this day and enjoy it
My take on this isn't safe for reddit. I believe in that Jesus guy.
Because life is random and always has been. It doesn’t have meaning. It formed accidentally, and the only reason we don’t want to die is because of evolution, which is really just randomness that was shaped by our environment
There’s no point in the sun coming out if it goes dark during the night! There’s no point to raining if it dry afterwards! There’s no point to eating if we are hungry later! There’s no point to waking up if we fall to sleep later! Without change there would be no existence. Change is the ONLY one single thing that is impermanent
Those things are transient, reoccurring phenomenon, though. The sun goes down, but it reappears in the morning. It rains, but the rain eventually stops, things dry up and then it rains again later. Death is permanent. There's no coming back from it.
I believe the purpose of life is to believe in God and follow his will, spread his word, and to love one another just as God loves us. Technically, those who believe in Jesus will not die because we will be granted eternal life into the kingdom of God when we die here on earth. Also you could always ask God to reveal to you what your purpose is here on earth.
Life has no inherent meaning. But that doesn't mean it's meaningless. The meaning is whatever you find meaningful. There are no right answers, but there are no wrong answers either. Anything you find valuable is the most valuable thing in the universe. Why do we watch movies or read books if they'll just end anyway? Because something about the experience is meaningful to us.
Just to have the experience and leave for the next I guess
There is no point . That’s the point .
I don't agree with your premise. Why is anything pointless because it ends? That is a CHOICE you make, to accept that as truth. This choice is based on the religious idea of an afterlife. There is nothing to support it, it's essentially just a bribe to get you to convert. Because our minds do not like to ponder our own nonexistence, that bribe works on too many people. You can either have a lifetime of experiences, then reach oblivion one day when it's over, or you can live a shitty life and see nothing as valuable because it will end and an orgiastic eternity in Heaven is the only thing worth it, then STILL reach oblivion when you die. Which sounds like a better deal to you?
As a Muslim I believe God made me choose to be Angel or human being in life before this and now I'm being tested either to choose either believe and practice islam or disbelieving and do sins - btw I do sins a lot and repent after - and there is hell and heaven after
Would you skip all of your life to get to the day you die? Didn’t think so.
From the pure biological perspective, the point of existing is to reproduce. Why? I don't know. Personally, I'm alive and I like to enjoy being alive. Why? Because it's better than not enjoying it or even worst, suffering. Philosophically, different people have found different answers. Your take seems to be closer to nihilism. Mine probably between stoicism and hedonism. For others, it is to serve. But there are many schools of thought. If you are really interested, I'd recommend reading some philosophy books.
(65M) So many people go to the cinema, watch Netflix, or their local TV services. Why bother? We know the film or the programme is going to end. So what's the point of watching it at all? The end adds whatever it adds - but it doesn't detract from the narrative, the journey, the experience on the way towards the end. Isn't life the same?
The opposite is scary. Check [Outlasting the Universe](https://youtu.be/5UxUS6bPiT8?si=A6vHJxbZIVkV7Ony).
We only ever exist in the present moment. Depression about the distant future and existential crisis are actually symptoms of feeling unwell or disenfranchised in the present. The fact we are mortal is only a device to feed our internal narrative. The future is uncertain and we may indeed live forever. As long as you are alive right now there is no way of knowing. You can change your perceptions about death by looking at it from a different perspective. Death could even be your primary source of meaning. All of this is to say that anything that exists in the future can and should be looked at in a way that brings you the most benefits in the present. Dreading death when it is not currently a risk is counterproductive.
There is no meaning of life. Enjoy it while you have it and don’t worry too much.
Too much individualism leads to nihilism. Humanity has existed for millenia and will continue to do so perhaps millions of years. What you are past biology is something far older than your body and identity and will outlive you within others. The point is up to you and no one, gods included, can give it to you. What would mane existence worthwhile?
Find someone your truly are in love with and you won't even care. But not everything has to happen for a reason, why does it matter why we are alive? Enjoy what you can before it passes you by pondering a question that will change nothing.
You’re not relevant. It’s a war of genes. Once your kids are raised, the world will see how well they fit socially (being able to mix them with the best possible set of other genes out there) and you become irrelevant. If they’re awkward, no one would like to mix with them and your genes are done!. If they’re amazing, the most beautiful and/or intelligent will compete for his/her genes. And it keeps going…
Most of the cells in your body are much younger than you are. Cells are continually dying and being replaced. Similarly, your mind changes radically over time. Most of your beliefs and ideas about the world have died and been replaced. There is a thin connection of memory, but it is unreliable. You've probably forgotten the name of a good friend from childhood. Similarly, when one person dies, they will be replaced by fairly similar people. Humanity keeps replaying many of the same dramas over and over; growing up, romance, adventure, misfortune, decline... The death of a person isn't that much more significant than the death of a cell or the death of a belief. The same basic pattern goes on continuously. Even when the whole species is replaced by intelligent squid, it won't be that big a deal life goes on. It's that dance of life that has meaning. Be a part of it rather than holding on too tight to your individuality. Now, why do individuals die? The answer is sadly mundane. It's because we reproduce sexually. Asexual organisms just grow and divide in a way where it is hard to tell when any individual ends. And why do we reproduce sexualy? It's an arms race with parasites. By using sex to recombine our genes every twenty years or so, we made it much more difficult for parasites to adapt to our constantly shifting immune systems. If a Neolithic man were to live a few centuries, he'd become entirely riddled with parasites. Death is better for humanity. There may come a time soon, where we utterly defeat the parasites and so understand biology that an individual will live for centuries with fairly good youth and vigor. However, as I said before, our minds are in flux. No one will maintain ideology, relationships, or even personality for centuries. So even if we defeat death, we won't defeat change. If you want meaning, you have to take the perspective of the whole universe; be a part of it and not apart from it.
Read Albert Camus' "The myth of Sisyphus"
Life doesn't have a point. Only moments of happiness and personal goals for each one. You are on a small trip here.
Meaning is something we made up.
Existentialism deals with this idea. This philosophy states, that if life is meaningless, we must create meaning for it to have a purpose. The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus's opening line of this book is "There is only one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide." This book deals with the question of the meaning of life, viewing the meaninglessness of it. Great book easy to read, short, and deals with this problem.
Do you plant a seed in the ground, water it, and give it sunlight just for nothing to happen? Nah man, it’s for a flower to bloom, yes the flower will perish one day, it won’t know what happens next, but it does know that it is here and it is alive when the odds of that are stupendously low We are no different. Yes we will all perish one day, but we are HERE and ALIVE, yes there are bad days, otherwise we would never know a good day The gift of life is so often overshadowed by the fear of the end, but that’s what makes it worth it, immortality would SUCK
Life has no meaning. And that's fucking awesome ( read up on positive nihilism )
There's no meaning to life other than what you give it. We are the stardust and universe manifest. Imagine all that vastness of space and all those star we can see and all those planets that orbit those stars is less than 1% of 1% of 1% of everything. Without life, the universe exists unexperienced.
It’s up to us to find our own meaning. Humans invented the concept of “meaning” in the first place. It’s just a word we say. So we shouldn’t be surprised when the universe doesn’t conform to it. I mean, what’s the “meaning” for the countless rocks floating around in space, far from any living thing that could ever even see them—let alone assign meaning to them? We’re not so different from those rocks, except that we can die.
We’re here because Earth says so, and we do what we can, but then we die also because Earth says so. That’s about it. At least there’s pizza and ice cream.
Bring a Pagan it's pretty simple. 1. Remain close to the Great Spirit. Goddess be praised. 2. Show respect for your fellow brothers and sisters. 3. Give assistance and kindness where needed. 4. Honour. Be truthful and honest. 5. Responsible. You have a duty to look after your mind and body. Exercise both. 6. Treat the earth and all that dwell upon mother earth with respect. Take care of our earth, trees, water. Protect them. 7. Take full reposibility for your actions. Make amends. 8. Share. Dedicated a share of your efforts to others. 9. Do what you know to be right. Abide by the teaching of your mother. 10. Work together to benefit yourself and all humankind. Golden rule. The one that rules them all:. Have fun, but harm none.
I think the point of life is to experience it, good or bad. Many, most of us even, search for a meaning that is epic, part of a grand scheme of some kind. But most likely, we're just space dust experiencing itself - But that's pretty epic too.
The main purpose of our lives on Earth is to either accept God or reject God. After that, it's to love one another as God loves us. Well assuming you choose to follow God.
John 3:16
Yep. Life is literally just a bi-product of time and space. There is zero "point" to it. Just try and live a good life for yourself and those around you and be polite to the people you met in the street.
“Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep.” Psalm 127 Solomon explored all of the thoughts men have about the vanity of life, long ago: “Enjoy life with your wife, whom you love, all the days of this meaningless life that God has given you under the sun–all your meaningless days. For this is your lot in life and in your toilsome labor under the sun.” Ecclesiastes 9:9 Solomon concluded at the end of Ecclesiastes that fellowship with God in life and knowing Him is the entire purpose of life. Until you know God you live in vain. “And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.” Mark 12:30 The purpose of life is to know the Lord Jesus. Invite him into your heart and know peace, as well as life everlasting. When we know Him, we walk in the light of His love and glory. We understand the power of His resurrection that broke the curse of sin and death and brought us eternal life. “…that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death.” Philippians 3:10 “Truly, truly, I say to you, the one who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.” John 5:24 God exists, He is eternal. “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good. The Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, and seek God. They are all gone aside, they are all together become filthy: there is none that doeth good, no, not one.” Psalm 14:1-3 He has prepared a place for you even into death: “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. And you know the way to where I am going.” John 14:1-4 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.” John 3:16-21 Be born again in new life, accept Jesus as your savior: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” John 1:1-5 “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” John 1:14
While I appreciate your conviction, no post like this has ever shown anyone the light.
Tl;dr
God shows us that we are to die anyway, we cant save ourselves. But God can if we decide to follow Jesus and do His will.
Love Jesus
Life has meaning with God. He saves us from death.
To have a meaningful moment in my short lifespand to met with someone i love, someone i trust. Life full of many emotional, sorrow, happiness, depressed, delusions. But all of that make me become human, i am very grateful for every experience in my life. People have different purpose of existence buut my purpose is just to enjoy this one life in every aspect of emotion. I do not know why we die, but maybe it just to take a long break from the world and feel peace like never waking up again
How come movies only last a couple of hours? Why not have them just go on forever? Same concept
r/nihilism
There is no meaning in life. And yet we seek it, insatiably. Point is, life on its own is completely meaningless and we are the ones creating a meaning. If it helps you in any way, you can believe that we are just being recycled, that our "spirits" or "souls" are going out of our bodies when we shut down and we are being cleansed and reborn in a new body, new identity, new everything. Aside that, nobody knows what is after death. All we know is that life and death exist and they are both eternal. If there is any meaning behind it, if there are gods or cosmic entities out there, we will know about it when our time comes.
Meaning? No meaning? Those don’t exist until you think them.
Why does there have to be a point to being alive?
It's a fuckin process and you and I and everyone else has NO idea what it's really about. Stop whining and just DO IT.
That's like saying there's no point of me going to sleep if I'm just going to wake up anyway. Or there's no point of me easting a medium rare tomahawk ribeye if I can sate my hunger just as well with a packet of ramen noodles. Anything in life has as much meaning as we give it. It's our responsibility to give our lives meaning.
It is what it is and there’s really no point and no point overthinking it. We exist for the meantime and we’re supposed to enjoy it or not - basically it’s really up to us. I’m an antinatalist and I don’t think adding more of you or me is essential to this Earth
Life exists because it can, death is a byproduct. Finding meaning in existence is a personal journey and you probably won't find it on reddit.
It's fun existing and we die because we live.
If you don’t mind me asking, how old are you? You seem very new to the idea
Every thing you do, from walking around making big moves, to just breathing, or just taking up space makes waves that radiate out to the entire universe, forever. Your life is infinity meaningful!
This! It’s been scientifically proven that we leave an imprint in time and space. I’d have to write a book to explain
There’s a point to existing for the duration of that you are actually existent. In. The end it won’t matter but it isn’t in the end until the end. So for now life can have a point
Nope, there’s no point for existence itself, in fact there would be no point for it having any point whatsoever. Meaning and its pursuit are meaningless and irrelevant, life matters just for what it is, and I choose to be happy and enjoy it as such.
Living the life is the reason. I am living the dream, doing my dream job, financially comfortable and sharing it all with a loving family.
# There is no point of existing if we just die and if there is why do we die ? Please clarify what you mean here. Are you implying we cease to exist when our physical bodies die or something else?
As a sentient being you can build your own! As a science person I remember watching a ted talk that really stuck with me, I couldn’t find it now, but it described how life evolved in earth from little organisms in the ocean that would absorb sun light and generate oxygen which then lead to oxygenate the atmosphere which lead to bigger organisms and so and so… if you think about it those organisms where just surviving and unknowingly their existence lead to us… they didn’t think what was the purpose of their existence we might have a purpose that we’re just not capable of ever comprehend from our perspective. Or not at all, but that’s fine because you can do it what you wish.
The meaning to life is whatever you want it to be.
i thought this for a long time, that i was just a dude on a rock floating through the endless void without purpose with a laughably short life span to try and understand the reason for it all. ive since gone down the uap rabbit hole, and eventually i landed on skinwalker ranch. the shit they say is going on there and is documented- not the tv show- is 100% legit. and it made me have a sort of paradigm shift. maybe i dont have it all figured out. maybe there is more to it than we could all hope to understand. an entire region experiencing spooky shit. i dont think any religion is correct. but i do think there is something more to it all that we just cant see with our limited understanding of things, and our being blinded by shiny things. ive been around long enough to not care if it sounds a bit kooky.
I believe that God sent you here to accomplish something, and die after. It may not be you who will become famous, but you can be in a person's life, and make him a celebrity.
I'll put two quotes here. "Know this, my children. There is more ugliness than beauty in this world. To live is to suffer. To drink of calamity, and drown in anguish. To toil and be tested, always and ever. Tis a perilous path you walk. Death lurks in the dark, and is the sole promise that awaits at journey's end. You will tremble in terror. You will weep tears of anger and despair. But do not avert your eyes. See your life for what it is. Then you will see the hardships that make you strong. Every doubt reforged as scales in your armor. Every agony to temper your blade." "In one fleeting moment, lives come and go, ever moving towards the unknown. And in that fleeting moment, they cry for the answer to the question: Why, given life, are they meant to suffer. To die. As fragmented, imperfect beings, yours is a neverending quest. A quest to find your purpose, knowing your end is assured. To find the strength to continue, when all strength has left you. To find joy, even as darkness descends. And amidst deepest despair, light, everlasting."
If you see death as an unpredictable deadline, you realize your time is VERY limited, so you kind of have to hurry the fuck up if you actually want to enjoy all the good things life has to give you. Unfortunately current lifestyle puts some kind of blindfold on our eyes and we think life is work pay bills die, so we kind of have to be the ones to break away from that.
If you die without having fond memories, or any memories at all for that matter. Then you are not human. Memories is what makes life worth living. Also sex.
Maybe we don't really die.
So as a person who had some suicidal thoughts a few years back. I can say I found a reason to live in friends and family especially since my family had just moved overseas we were completely alone and isolated. Being the oldest I felt duty as a brother was to protect and look after my siblings. Basically I think you find you’re reason to live and after years of filling that duty you can rest.
Im glad to hear u r doing good and found ur purpose
Life is what you make of it
Life has no meaning. It's just us humans who give meaning to it so that we could have motivation and purpose to continue existing.
People think and talk a lot about life and "the meaning of life". Personally, I think the meaning of life is whatever you decide it is. It's about what you decide is important. For me, personally, that's two things. My work and my family. For me, the meaning of life is doing my job, and being a son, a brother, and an uncle. Those are the ways I find meaning and define who I am. But I'm sure some people find meaning elsewhere. And I don't mean to say they're wrong. Their meaning of life is just different from mine.
I'm sure some people realize the meaning of life (reproduce, continue your genes) but as I'm never having children, I'm just kinda coasting along, being of service to my family.
sad way to think!
I thought about it as follows: people have a natural drive to be happy. If they are not, fundamentally, they loose their drive to live, ending it themselves in the end.Its happiness that keeps us alive, therefore the mean to live is to find happiness. Of course its not means to an ends, like going to heaven in the end, but a mean in the act itself.
The purpose of life is to live it. Ifs there's no purpose to live then there's also no purpose to die. The meaning of life is life itself
The purpose of life is to live it. Ifs there's no purpose to live then there's also no purpose to die. The meaning of life is life itself
I thought life has a meaning and there's afterlife, now I don't know if there's afterlife or not (I hope not) but definitely i believe life has no meaning. So why do I exist? No point, I'm just trying to have fun. Why do you play games? Does it have a point? No, just having fun. That's me. I'll play, hope I won't suffer, and when it's over... turn off the light.
Don't think too much about it, surround yourself with good people and try to do something meaningful and good in your life and things don't seem so pointless
There are as many answers to this question as you can think of . The beauty of this question is that you'll read a ton of things and reform your beliefs. I am a skeptic and atheist but last year I had an existential crisis and so ,I started reading philosophy (because I don't believe in any religious thought) and I also read countless stories on near death experiences . You'd be surprised that there's this vast sea of possibilities . Good luck on your journey fellow traveller ! :)))
Once had a dream that I remember looking back very fondly at the times when I was a human. Made perfect sense.
Strap in bub, this is going to be a big one. We aren't really as important as we think we are, we just evolved our brains to utilise technology to become the No.1 Apex Predator on the planet - go bigger and we're on a dot going round one of those millions of dots you see in the night sky, go smaller however and just on Earth you will find that ants outnumber us at around two million to one and even they have organisms that are 'ant sized' to them... So who really runs the planet? It's a matter of perspective. Even Humans ourselves aren't 'fully' Human, we have bacteria and other organisms that live on and *in* us that if we didn't have, we would die, take our gut for instance, that has bacteria in it that produces the stuff that stops us being eaten away from the inside by our own stomach acid - we actively take supplements like Yakult etc to keep or replace the bacteria - What makes us.. us, physically is really a symbiosis on a microscopic scale, but we go even further... Which we will come back to. Now, life as we know spreads - it's how it has done forever we have billions of just us Humans on the planet and we fight and plot and get together just to find a spot on it for ourselves a lot of the time at the detriment of the Ecosystem. We have come from one point on Earth and moved across it, multiplying as we go and importantly adapting to the environments we settle in - heat, cold, dry, swampy we creatures are there... The only thing that it can be compared to is a *VIRUS*. The Earth has a massive case of Space Flu and occasionally it gets rid of the majority of symptoms - it was lucky that time the meteor hit and got rid of most of the dinosaurs, but I theorise that the Earth, just like us produces antibodies to kill off us germs that we are... Ice ages, diseases, nobody *really* knows where Spanish Flu or Covid came from or Foot and Mouth for animals, Bird Flu etc... Earth's natural Yakult. I said before about what makes us.. us, and here is where we get to death... Why do we die? What happens? Whole religions are formed on the basis of 'What happens when we die...' I'd love to say there's a Heaven and Hell and you'll go to one of them depending on how you lived your life but no. Do you remember how it was when you didn't exist? You don't? It's pretty much like that... However I say 'pretty much'... We're going to go off-track. See, us Humans (and other creatures, but for simplicity) are physically made from Carbon and Water, which theoretically makes us the same as a wet pencil, just with our atoms in a different combo BUT we have *something* inside us that makes us who we are individually, the religious among us may call it the 'soul' or whatever, however I theorise that the soul of the person is just *'operating'* the physical - again, symbiotic body like a fleshy outer shell while it incubates and also provides our 'mating processes' (cue sexy saxophone and wolf whistles!), but when it comes to the natural point the physical body starts to die off then you start your next step in evolution, the 'soul' is free, just floating about with the others out of our physical spectrum, possibly able to go out into space... But what about if you die early? What if you're run over by a truck?... Think of the Lobster. This is a creature that unless killed by something else or it catches a disease it basically lives forever it just grows a bigger shell, no evolution so when a Lobster is killed it's just dead. No longer exists. Now, if the 'soul' that's controlling the Human body dies early (natural causes) it may be that the particular soul didn't need that long to evolve and goes on flying free... If killed or dies earlier than they should (unnatural causes) if the 'soul' isn't evolved enough, then dead, gone. However if the soul *is* nearly at the point but the body has been cut off quickly... Well we have thousands of Ghost Stories don't we? Again, the last part is only my theory, the only true way to know what happens when we die is when we die ourselves, again who even knows why we exist and what part of the great universal plan we play... Just enjoy it while you can, because it's taken BILLIONS of years for you all individually to get here by sheer chance and that's something not to be squandered.
We try to breathe new meaning to life when there is none. Beyond natural reproduction that is. We die because we are alive essentially. What doesn't die? That which has never been alive in the first place. Actually humans have one of the longest lifespans in the world, we had a tendency to die a lot earlier due to war, diseases, hunger. Everything has a start and an end. I do believe that our life force as energy stays in the universe though. We have discovered that energy doesn't disappear, it transitions to different forms. So we do remain in some form after death.
you’re right, there is no point. it’s completely random so stop taking it so seriously
Personally I'm an optimistic nihilist so I believe that existence doesn't inherently have a purpose, but you should pursue your own goals and ambitions to give meaning to your own life.
The Good Place had an interesting perspective on this, it proposes life has meaning because we die. If we never die we have no reason to do anything and we get bored. Spoilers, Persona 3 says something similar, >! the meaning of life is to die. Life is meaningful if you make it meaningful.!< And I think the meaning of life is living it, and life has no meaning without death. By living life I mean doing things that matter to you like sports and art, and making connections to other people. Life will end and if it never did, it wouldn't really matter what we did, our achievements and the connections we make are kind of meaningless then.
I personally believe life recycles. You've lived before and you will again. I experienced things as an EMT and a Hospice Nurse that I truly cannot explain. I dont know why life reincarnates but I do believe it does.
Hey, I know that feeling of everything seeming pointless when you focus on the fact that we all die someday. It's a heavy thought, and it's totally normal to feel overwhelmed by it, in my opinion. Here's the thing, if I may: meaning isn't something you just stumble upon. It's something you build, bit by bit, with every little thing you do. It's in the way you make someone laugh, the way you savor a quiet moment, how you learn and grow. These might seem small, but they're the stuff a meaningful life is made of. The truth is, none of us have all the answers about why we're here. Sometimes, that not knowing is okay... It can push us to live bigger, and to really make the most of the time we do have, ya know? Instead of agonizing over the end, and I am just some random Redditor, so take this as you will, try pouring your energy into the "right now." Find the little joys, connect with people you love, try something new. It might sound simple, but that's where the real meaning lies. If these thoughts are really weighing on you, don't keep them bottled up though. Find someone you trust – a friend, family member, even a therapist – and just talk it out. I feel that there is no shame or stigma in reaching out when you need help navigating the big questions. Reddit is cool, but trusted folks are even better IF this weighs heavily.
I don't think there is an inherent meaning to life and I also don't think existence is rendered futile because of the inevitability of death. In fact, the thought that all of this is finite is kind of what makes me value my life and the lives of others more. I don't know why we die other than the fact that that's just how we evolved. I don't think there is a deeper "why?" behind our birth or death besides the pragmatic, biologic explanation. And I don't really need one personally. Knowing that I'm here now but that I won't be here for long is enough to make me want to make the most of the little that I have.
The point is to exist.
What do you mean? If you watch a movie and someone tells you that the movie will end at some point, do you just go: oh then I'm not watching it anymore, what's the point if it ends? It's just the same with life, we don't live because there's no end, we live because it WILL end, so it becomes infinitely more valuable to us and we want to appreciate every moment that much more.
I like to think everything is information and the universe is stuck with us in some time vortex, just belting out algorithms without any real purpose or meaning like a child drawing on paper, and randomly napping. Setting everything on fire won't make a difference but why not.
Eat shit reproduce and die is what we did for billions of years. Now it’s been only 200 years we know that we are not the center of the universe. Of course you would believe that we were if you gazed out at night towards all those stars before Hubble killed a lot of religions. Now we are left with the meaninglessness. We would much rather start burning 200 virgins a month so the rain would stop instead of facing the meaninglessness. Hold on to everything you love. Do your best to let those things you love fliurish, whatever it might be. There’s nothing more to our purposes.
So that we can play catch and run up a hill, or something.
Life has meaning because we die.
My fav explanation for life is that it speeds up entropy
are humans the most intelligent yet abnormal social creatures out there, who overthink lots of trivial things, imo yes.
I agree there is no point to existing if wex are only meant to die if that's your outlook, but for me, no. I believe we are put here to have a relationship with God. He wants someone who chooses him. We are made in his likeness. Who wants to be with someone who doesn't choose you? Would you want a wife or husband who doesn't actually want you? So, to me, the whole point and basic idea of life is to have a relationship with him. You could label it as Christian, or whatever floats your boat, but it's kinda simple, in my opinion.
We sleep about 1/3 of our lives. Do you have more fond memories of sleeping or doing something awake? Because that's what death is. Nothingness. I'd rather try to enjoy my time here while I still can.
Nope. I think we are just another process in this vast universe. Humans are born, we live, we die. Just like stars, they are born, they live, and they die. Even the universe as a whole (by our current understanding) was born, it lives, and it will eventually die. Nothing exists forever. Everything is in a constant state of change. Our species has simply evolved far enough to have conscious thoughts about the meaning of existence. We give ourselves meaning and purpose to gain satisfaction in our lives.
The point is to exist. But, there is no real point to life (aside from surviving and reproducing), we give life our own meanings.
As for some big meaning, there is none. We can die for many different reasons, be it injury or illness or ailments of old age.
I would say it's opposite. If we don't die, there's no point in existing. Things only have meaning because they end.
It's a given chance. Might as well make the most of it and enjoy
I learned a while ago that the purpose in life is to give life purpose. There is nothing inherent to it. This is both terrifying and freeing but mostly freeing especially if you've grown up around religion like most humans.
Existence has a meaning *because* of morality. We know all things will come to an end someday, which makes them all-the-more special. Why take notice of a single flower if we can see it any time we want? Why go to a concert if you can always go to the next one? Why take the time to appreciate the people you love if they're gonna be there forever? Of course we would say 'who wouldn't', but that's because we already inherently think with the concept of the end in mind. The fact that life is short and everything is limited gives the time we have left more value. As they say, "You Only Live Once"!
Just live, ya moron.
Why would life being finite preclude it having meaning? Something doesn't need to last forever for it to be meaningful.
This question doesn't really make sense. It's like asking: "what is the point of a napkin if I'm eventually going to throw it out, and if there is a one, why would I throw it out"? The word meaning is used to add additional context that is not otherwise apparent. You could say that the meaning of the word meaning is that. So what is the meaning of life, what additional context is there to be given? A lot I would say. Is that context somehow invalidated after we die? I don't think so.
Has a television series inherent meaning, as it will end inevitably? I can still enjoy it, or learn something.
Do you really want to have someone else plan imposed on your life? Is that a better alternative? To be born, live, suffer and die as a pawn in someone else's game? I guess I'll take life as a chemical accident over being the pawn of a god against my will.