|
|
Post by Hercules on Feb 11, 2017 9:02:45 GMT
There are some smart cookies on this forum and I am interested in them letting me know what they view the purpose of life as being.
Get religious if you want if that's your answer, but lets not debate religious views
I am very interested in what you have to say.
Here is my take...
1) Does there have to be a purpose in the first place? Can't we just sit around watching Fox News feeling smugly superior to Sean Hannity and then kick the bucket when we are eighty something if we are lucky to live that long.
2) What does having a purpose mean? If we can define it easily then it must be readily achievable and if it is acheivable what happens if you get there in your thirties. Do you "clock" life (do people remember clocking video games?) and try to achieve your purpose multiple times.
3) Is the purpose of your life a process? Making it something you can live and build into your everyday habits but never arrive at?
I think people start searching for this question when they feel a lack of direction. They have a job. They have a roof over their head. What next, what should they be striving for. What goals and resolutions should they make where ideally everything should align to a master plan or a master purpose or purpose for life if you will.
Steven Covey in his seminal work (if you like him enough to believe he had a seminal piece of work) the 7 habits advocates living by values and just seeing where you end up as you tackle each life cross road question one at a time.
I am dodging the question which doesn't make this a good OP. But perhaps that is my point. I don't have a firm feel for the purpose of life. As a christian I do have some theories and thoughts from the bible but I don't know any more. Whether I try to glorify God, or just be the very best I can be every day it seems much of a muchness.
Phew! that will do for an OP I will chime in more with thoughts and theories I have as the thread unfolds.
Happy Posting.
|
|
|
|
Post by Medicated on Feb 11, 2017 9:45:15 GMT
42
|
|
|
|
Post by Medicated on Feb 11, 2017 10:10:20 GMT
I think how you frame(d) the question has determined the answer...
"It's what you make it"
- Masm
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Feb 11, 2017 10:13:03 GMT
I often wonder the same thing Hercs. It appears the purpose of life is to work and pay bills and be able to feed ourselves but religiously I believe God put is here for a reason that we may never know until we pass on to be with him in the end. They say the Bible is like a manual for us to live our lives and that you can find the answer to anything from what we should be eating and how to treat others while we live here in this earth.
Life is full of lessons to be learned from our mistakes as well.
I just keep cruising through doing what I do working and paying bills just to survive but in the meantime to treat people with dignity and respect and try to follow what is right and do my best as that is what is in my heart.
Religiously I believe the purpose is to do what God wants us to do so that when he sends Jesus back that we will be rising back to heaven with him to live forever in a palace where there is no hate, pain or suffering and we will spend eternity praising God.
|
|
|
|
Post by David on Feb 11, 2017 10:36:20 GMT
The short answer, in my opinion, is to protect the species from extinction
through procreation; the period of time we are part of life
is less significant although important to the individual in
making of this time what we can for the betterment of ourselves and others
which is ultimately
determined by our thoughts, feelings and subsequent actions.
We die in order to make room for future generations and
the process continues as it has done since time and immemorial.
Hence human existence is and always has been a leasehold
situation/arrangement with no prospect of negotiating the freehold...
in terms of living forever here on earth.
More importantly I regard our mortality as the passport we require to an eternal existence...
whereby the complexities of life (as we know it)... we are no longer subjected to.
In earthly speak we regard such place as heaven
that is for those of us who believe in an after life.
Just my personal belief as one of many I suspect
that I look forward to read along with those that have already been posted!
|
|
|
|
Post by computerchip1 on Feb 11, 2017 12:49:56 GMT
1. Family. To love what you’ve got. To find the best wife I can (a major struggle actually) and stay with her for a lifetime, even if she is not ideal. Devoting my life to that wife through thick and thin. To have a few children, raise them, and stay close to them. To love wife and family.
2. Work. To spend years getting the best job I can and to earn money.
3. Personal growth. God designs this. For me it has been through long-term illness. It has been a long road.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Feb 11, 2017 22:22:07 GMT
My purpose in life.
First and foremost is to get through each day, yesterday that equated to having a shower at midday and putting on new night clothes...I had had enough through lack of sleep, a recent bereavement and some bad news about my grand daughters health...so I did ok.
I try not to hang on to anger but accept every person has a right to their opinion although if you keep shoving it down my throat expect me to disappear from your life, so that purpose is not to react with button pushers or bullies.
Forgiveness is something I truly practice and gives my life purpose, forgiveness for those who act rashly and hurt but their intention was not that it was a flight or fight reaction.
My purpose is try to do everything through love, the opposite is fear.
I no longer see my purpose as travelling to exotic places, eating at fine establishments, beauty appointments, clothes...my purpose is to be grateful for everything I have, I have enough and I have my dog and cat...they love me even when I do spend the day in bed.
Once I wanted a farm and children and a swimming pool and a business and I had all that...at a price...my mental health.
so my purpose in life is to simply do the very best I can with the hours given to me each day...that is my purpose and to be kind because that is free and to share what little I have with those that have nothing.
Age brings that contentment I think.
|
|
|
|
Post by mike412 on Feb 12, 2017 7:33:45 GMT
I don't know, I think one person's guess is just as good as another. I think I'm kinda like a rider on the storm like Jim Morrison was singing about. I recommend the book "Wilderness" by Jim Morrison. Nobody really knows for sure why we're here but it's fun to think about sometimes.
I've always wondered if there's a God what would he want with us is life a test to see how good of servants we'd make forever in the afterlife or what purpose would we serve him and would we forever be in debt to him in heaven, do we owe eternity of praise to our maker or is he just like Santa Claus it's all free and what would heaven be like etc. what would it be like to feel 1000 years pass etc. would a person get bored/fed up etc.
Here's a video I like on the subject -The Secret of life By: The Dead Milkmen
www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uEBd1Ud4ak |
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Feb 12, 2017 12:29:27 GMT
Nature is using us, as her coherent tools...to produce our successors. She's taken normal (evolutionary) development as far as she can. Now, we are genetically modifying life that can live on Mars and beyond. We're prying open the universe and the atom...simultaneously. We're programming artificial intelligences with algorithms that function beyond our understanding. Nature understands.
He designed this; "Falling Water":
|
|
|
|
Post by computerchip1 on Feb 12, 2017 23:39:32 GMT
Thanks for asking that question. I believe it reveals a lot about us by how we answer. I realized that the purpose in life I described above was for the married, but I am single. Also, I need to consider my mental illness. Here is my revised answer:
1. Activities of daily living, like buying and preparing food, personal hygiene, and obtaining medical care.
2. Things-to-do. Some sense of structure.
3. Having support and love.
4. Just coping and enduring to a natural death and then being rewarded with Heaven. (My belief.)
And as you start to recover--
5. Keeping good friends and doing good activities together.
6. Going to work week by week.
7. Enjoying my best standard-of-living for my income. For me, having a car.
8. Thinking, reading, and writing. And prayer to God.
9. Then, perhaps, seeking romance.
|
|
|
|
Post by Medicated on Feb 13, 2017 6:12:04 GMT
I would like to just quasi-randomly add the Bohemian virtues of Truth, Beauty, Freedom, and above all, Love (from the movie Moulin Rouge).
Interestingly, I read somewhere today that when someone learns to speak, they learn to lie.
So maybe with the birth of Truth, Beauty, Freedom, and Love, we have the other sides existing (and giving definition and meaning to the original terms).
In other words, for me, the purpose of life may be the simultaneous lack of purpose.
Last thing I want to add is the cartoon Mike shared with us about life is about "eat, survive, reproduce"... up until our present day, where we suddenly shift our thinking to "what's it all about?"
Being present in the moment is another clue. The moment of orgasm supposedly is one way for a moment in time where the pendulum between past and future stops swinging and only the present exists.
Lastly I want to share this quotation of a student's prayer:
"Creator of all things, true source of light and wisdom, origin of all being, graciously let a ray of your light penetrate the darkness of my understanding. Take from me the double darkness in which I have been born, an obscurity of sin and ignorance. Give me a keen understanding, a retentive memory, and the ability to grasp things correctly and fundamentally. Grant me the talent of being exact in my explanations and the ability to express myself with thoroughness and charm. Point out the beginning, direct the progress, and help in the completion. Amen"
|
|
|
|
Post by Sketcher2 on Feb 13, 2017 7:02:00 GMT
Hey Hercules/Administrator have you ever read Rick Warren's Purpose Driven Life book? It talks about our purpose. I would recommend it to you. I believe the purpose to our lives is to glorify God. To me that means that I choose to have faith in him despite him allowing me to have attacks a few times a day and sometimes just once a day. I choose to read his word and do my best to follow it. I tell others about my faith ( this is the hardest part for me.) Because I am unwell to the point of not being able to work, I must wisely choose what to do with my time. It's not about what we want to do with our lives because our lives are so insignificant compared to the Grand Picture, but in everything that we do to give Him the glory. That is what I believe.
|
|
|
|
Post by Hercules on Feb 13, 2017 7:48:16 GMT
I had difficulty reading the purpose driven life Fluerette as the first twenty pages were focused on prayers you were supposed to say all day during the day even while walking down the street. I probably should have stuck it out.
|
|
|
|
Post by mike412 on Feb 13, 2017 9:01:51 GMT
I think God sounds like an egomaniac when people talk like our purpose is to praise God and serve him forever and it's going to be like being in church forever in heaven. Doesn't sound that good to me, sounds like a strict dictatorship and I question if that was the reason he created us to have something to manipulate and control, rule over.
I'd rather just cease to exist than have to go to a heaven like that but I wouldn't want to burn or be punished forever for not doing/thinking like my maker intended me to so I hope that's not the way it goes. I don't know what to believe.
|
|
|
|
Post by Hercules on Feb 13, 2017 9:07:04 GMT
I think God sounds like an egomaniac when people talk like our purpose is to praise God and serve him forever and it's going to be like being in church forever in heaven. Doesn't sound that good to me, sounds like a strict dictatorship and I question if that was the reason he created us to have something to manipulate and control, rule over. I'd rather just cease to exist than have to go to a heaven like that but I wouldn't want to burn or be punished forever for not doing/thinking like my maker intended me to so I hope that's not the way it goes. I don't know what to believe. Noted. Sounds like between our conversation in your blog and various other places that you are ready for a break from religious discussion. Which is all good. All things in moderation are good. Things in excess are not good. I guess putting aside God Mike, what do you think the purpose of life is from a non religious frame of reference? Keen to hear your insightful analysis. |
|
