...... My beliefs - The Meaning of Life - Blognow

My beliefs

The Meaning of Life

{ 9:34 AM, 18/10/2006 } { 3 comments } { Link }

I've highlighted in red the ones that make most sense to me. I'm not saying the others don't make sense, just not "most" sense for me.

Maybe others would like to use the list to refocus their lives.

What wikipedia has to say about it.

"What is the meaning of life?" is a question many people ask themselves at some point during their lives, most in the context "What is the purpose of life?" Here are some of the many potential answers to this perplexing question. Many of these responses could be shown to overlap in many ways:

Survival and temporal success

...to live everyday like it is your last and to do your best at everything that comes before you
...to accumulate wealth and increase social status
...to advance natural human evolution, or to contribute to the gene pool of the human race
...to advance technological evolution, or to actively develop the future human
...to compete or co-operate with others
...to destroy others who harm you, or to practice nonviolence and nonresistance
...to die having succeeded in your purpose
...to gain and exercise power
...to leave a legacy, such as a work of art or a book
...to live
...to produce offspring through sexual reproduction or asexual reproduction (alike to number three)
...to protect one's family
...to pursue a dream, vision, or destiny
...to seek freedom, either physically, mentally or financially
...to see how long humanity can go on, before it destroys the Earth
...to seek happiness and flourish, experience pleasure or celebrate
...to survive, including the pursuit of immortality through scientific means (see life extension)
...to complete your list of life goals
...to find something to believe

Wisdom and knowledge

...to be without question, or to keep asking questions
...to try to discover and understand the meaning of life
...to expand one's perception of the world
...to explore, to expand beyond our frontiers
...to learn from one's own and others' mistakes
...to seek truth, knowledge, understanding, or wisdom
...to understand creation
...to satisfy the natural curiosity felt by man about life.

Ethical

...to express compassion
...to follow the "Golden Rule"
...to give and receive love
...to live in a way that you don't harm yourself and don't harm your environment
...to work for justice and freedom
...to live in peace with each other, and in harmony with our natural environment (see utopia)
...to protect humanity, or more generally the environment
...to serve others, or do good deeds

Religious and spiritual

...2 Thessalonians 1: 11, 12 says our instructions from God as Christians is to be like Christ and to be worthy of his calling by doing what Christ would do (W.W.J.D.)
...to achieve a supernatural connection within the natural context
...to achieve enlightenment and inner peace
...to achieve rebirth in the Pure Land
...to become like God, or God-like
...to be rewarded for your deeds
...to experience existence from an infinite number of perspectives in order to expand the consciousness of all there is (i.e. God)
...to be a filter of creation between heaven and hell
...to produce useful structure in the universe over and above consumption (see net creativity)
...to reach Heaven in the afterlife
...to seek and acquire virtue, to live a virtuous life
...to turn fear into joy at a constant rate achieving on literal and metaphorical levels: immortality, enlightenment and atonement
...to understand and follow the "Word of God"
...to worship, serve, or achieve union with God

Other

...to be emotionally fulfilled
...to find true love
...to live, love, and laugh
...to achieve self-actualisation
...to contribute to collective meaning ("we" or "us") without having individual meaning ("I" or "me")
...to find a purpose, a "reason" for living that hopefully raises the quality of one's experience of life, or even life in general
...to live, and enjoy the passage of time
...to have fun
...to participate in the inevitable increase in entropy of the universe
...to make the conformists' lives miserable (see nonconformism)
...to participate in the chain of events which has led from the creation of the universe until its possible end (either freely chosen or determined, this is a subject widely debated amongst philosophers)
...to relate, connect, or achieve unity with others
...to resolve all problems that one faces, or to ignore them and attempt to fully continue life without them, or to detach oneself from all problems faced (see Buddhism)
...to seek and find beauty
...as there is no intrinsic meaning to life, to each individual, the "meaning of life" is whatever he/she decides it is. In that sense, every point above is potentially valid.
...an answer to the question "What is the meaning of life?" is that it is just simply being able to ask the question, "What is the meaning of life?" (see Sri Sri Ravi Shankar below)
...to determine a set of goals based on an individuals belief in the meaning of life and work towards the attainment of those objectives.
...to make life as difficult as possible for others
...42
...a combination of any of the above.

No purpose, and therefore...

...to simply live until one dies (there is no universal or celestial purpose)
...just a series of events
...just nature taking its course
...the wheel of time keeps on turning
...the cycle of life
...whatever you see you see, as in "projection makes perception"
...there is no purpose or meaning whatsoever (see nihilism)
...life may actually not exist, this is all a surreal dream.
...to live in fear of possible events that may happen after life ends.
...have fun while it lasts.
...the purpose of life is balance.

Very interesting

{ 11:21 AM, 18/10/2006 } { Posted by cherylgraham2 }
Well there are some good answers/solutions to the meaning of life in that reference, I didn't think to look in the Wikipedia for an answer - silly me :P

Well I think that I may have found my meaning of life and I am trying to take time to continue exploring my meaning of life. It will be an interesting journey.

Thanks Snowy,

Smiles,
Chezza <:-)

Thought you'd like it, Chezza

{ 11:28 AM, 18/10/2006 } { Posted by snowy }
Particularly the reference to Buddha. ;o)

This is a great list and I can fully agree!

{ 8:42 AM, 15/12/2006 } { Posted by theclogfromoz }
Thanks Snowy, for all these entries. Just going through all of them. What I really appreciate about these recent entries is the tone, the words you have chosen, the humanity that shines through it all (sorry, that word has been over-used, but I hope you understand in which way I mean this). Wish all people could be like this. And about the ones you marked in red: I fully agree.

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The Meaning of Life

Very interesting

Thought you'd like it, Chezza

This is a great list and I can fully agree!

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