What is the meaning of life? And the meaning of your life in particular? Mankind has been wondering about that for a very long time. Many religions say that your life is pre-determined, whatever happens is God's will. Which may be, but some of those religions also say that we have choices to make, if and you make the wrong ones then salvation will not be yours. So, can we assume that you have at least some decisions over what your life means?
Leaving aside the questions of religion and salvation, I do think each of us is responsible for deciding what the meaning of our lives is, and acting accordingly. A couple hundred years from now, who's going to know or care about us or what we did? That being so, what should we be concentrating on here and now?
My opinion is that the meaning of our lives depends on the impact we've had on those we share our lives with. Making the world a better place for somebody, even one person, is not a bad place to start with. Not everyone agrees with this of course; many are more focused on self-enrichment or aggrandisement. Personally, I have no problem with this up to a point, improving your standard of living and that of your family is okay by me. So long as you are not doing so at the expense of others that is.
The other thing is more of a self-actualization thing IMHO. Trying to make yourself into a better and smarter person is not a bad thing either. Nothing wrong with a little more wisdom. How you spend the time you have is the real meaning of your life; spend it wisely.
Very interesting. Rarely is this question asked.
I am amazed how much our birth family environment determines our lives, potentially. In some cases, such as mine, it determins it 99.9%, so I don't even get to ask this question, and also half the people on earth don't get to ask this question for the same reason.
But if we assume that we can ask, then I guess I speculate, that moving on lightly with minimal interference onto our environment/people is the best life possible. This is not achievable fully, because we all feel pain and hunger, but the closer we get to this, the more meaningful our life is.
It is a great achievement if we can beautify something, probably the only thing that we can do, considering that every work and effort is a zero sum game. It is especially interesting, that most of the time beautifying something is the same as not doing anything about it ... which brings us back to the need of moving on lightly as above.
It is possible that life has a purpose, but it is always unknown, and most people are eager to adapt the attitude of bullies to declare what the purpose of the self is and what the purpose of the other people around is. In practice, most people don't get a meaning to their lives, they just pay the cost of the meanings of others' lives forever.
(I know the above view may be unpopular, my literature teacher got pissed of by it too, but I would like to risk it here for an answer to your VERY interesting question. Maybe there will be message board members here to discuss about it.
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