to help other people
okay on everybody loves raymond thier daughter asked the meaning of life
and the mom put it this way;
"the meaning of life is never knowing whats going to happen next, yet predicting it at the same time. maybe it's also asking about everything you don't know and answering questions about everything you do know."
i hope that helps (:
make up your own, and have fun doing it. who you are is who you should be... start your own religion!
The fulfillment of the purpose of your human nature in accord with virtue.
We were put on this earth to be God's companions. We were then directed to love others and live a life that is pleasing and righteous, just as Jesus did. What is the meaning of life? It won't mean anything if you aren't happy with yourself. Why should you be living? That sounds like a spiritual journey you need to take. Watch The Darjeeling Limited.
Good luck and happy searching.
to procreate
As always... to love, and to be loved...
a) "The aim of life is to realise Truth and to be eternally free. Purification of the heart is essential to this realisation."
b) "What The Bleep Do We Know", and "Down The Rabbit Hole" dvd's are 2 very pertinent contributions on your question.
I'd go by the words 'just get on with it'.
Works for me.
The meaning of life varies among people. Only you can answer that question yourself.
I would say to find what you are suppose to do and do it. We were created with a specific purpose to touch specific lives and to fulfill the purpose God created you for. Simple as that!
Finally! Someone asks something I know!
Life can have meaning only if something higher than life gives it meaning!
If we exist only by accident, then any meaning, any virtue we concoct in our accidental minds is also an accident and therefore has no meaning.
Whether you give yourself utterly for the poor (Mother Teresa) or whether you murder people indiscriminately (Jeffrey Dahmer, Son of Sam, et al), a world view that holds that human experience is nothing more than the result of time plus matter plus chance ultimately makes all human actions equal.
The meaning of life is therefore "nothingness." Or as Dylan Thomas puts it, "The body upward, the head downward he tumbles into the nothingness from whence he came." The end of life is therefore only the grave. Children and one's deeds are his posterity, but there can be no knowledge of this posterity once death occurs.
People say, "Well, RA, you're not a nihilist, are you?" Well, that's one clear choice. I can make all the existential leaps I want, but at the end of the day, I still understand that I have made a leap — skipped pages, in effect, to escape nihilism.
Life, nature, being ... is meaningless unless something outside of nature lends meaning to it. But is there anything outside of nature?
Well, is there?
the word "meaning" is defined as
" the message that is intended or expressed or signified"
Or "the idea that is intended"
Ideas or messages about our existence (our life), if they exist at all, have to come from God.
Most of the answers here invite us to just invent something and pretend it's real. If we're satisfied with a make-believe meaning, then we can go ahead and invent something. Save the whales or save the snails; doesn't matter as long as we can convince ourselves that it's real when it isn't.
But real meaning can only come from God. I think it's God's way to urge us to seek Him (which is all He asks of us).
your confusion is right. no one leading a meaningful life. All are acting. No one is satisfied in any field. no satisfaction in any work. unnecessary troubles spoils our career. i am telling you seriously..
1. we born and grown.
2. when we are young, we have no opportunity to learn about life and of course we are not interested.
3. when we entering the familyfold, a lot of matters we have no understood about the life.
4. when we have children, our concentrations are with them, with their stuudies, with their welfare and no time to think over the life, since in a family the running day to day life is not a meaningful, but dutiful.
5. we are discharging our duties (except someone, many) proptly, of course though it is considered our duty. Even in this stage we don't think about the life.
6. when our children reaching the marriage age, we are to search for alliances and do marriages, and we didn't realise the life in this stage also.
7. we are getting old... this is the stage we begin to think about the life. why ? we faced many troubles, and we made all fecilities, we done marriage, but will they gave respect when we get old? no. when our heart get pain about this own son and daughters, we begin to think about the life. is it meaningful..? A big question mark??? so, we ourselves comes to a conclusion that we didn't run a meaningful life. ok... i ask you what is meaningful life? Actually, there is no 100% meaningful life. we do our duties, my forefathers done the life, similarly i am doing, similarly my son will do. They can run life, family. actually meaningful means dutyful life.. we are discharging our duty promptly means .. it is the meaningful life. don't seek or search meaning to the meaningful life. we ran family now got old means what ? we done our duty. satisfaction is another form. poor not satisfied because of money and rich also not satisfied because of money. in both ends no satisfaction. meaningless.. that is meaningful life. ok..
no one REALLY know's the answer to that question, but these are some good quotes about it
"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth."
- Umberto Eco
Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed.
--Blaise Pascal
theres only a meaning to life if life was created and only then would the creator know the meaning.
I believe there is no creator so no meaning is spontanious just as spontanious as you cant remember before birth your first memory or spontanious as not knowing when you will die. it could be today.