Do You Have a Purpose?
How do you define your own purpose for existance? Do you even need a purpose?
I certainly need something to get me up from day to day, but I think it’s called habit rather than purpose. I’m hoping that most people are the same. I mean, I have plenty of great things going on in my life, but they aren’t what I think about bounding of bed. Most days, I get up because that’s what you do when you’ve woken up, and then at some point later on (since I’m not an early morning person) I might think about what I’m about in the week, but I rarely think about the bigger picture.
I like there to be a bigger picture with some goal to aim for even if I never get there. Although I’d like to think that I work steadily towards a larger goal, that would, in fact, be complete rubbish. What I actually do is flit from one thing to another. In fact I’ve started writing this post at least three times already, trying to think about what I’m going to say.
In a general sense, my chosen purpose is to make things better than they were before, where better is pretty ill-defined (before, is before I was born). It’s not so much that I have chosen this purpose, as that it chose me. I will have been successfull if the world is better when I die, than it was when I was born. Given that that’s the case, it makes sense for me to work towards making things better.
Trouble is, that’s far too big a picture, and I don’t have any concrete details that I want to see happen. I kind of want society to be better, and for me not to have to make too much of a special effort in the process. I just want to live, have fun, and die (with the world a better place) and then fade into the background, firstly of my generation, and later my civilisation, much like we don’t really remember anything about stone age peoples. It’s not a particularly enthralling aim, but I guess that it’s mine.
What about you? Do you have a self-defined purpose, or do you manage perfectly well without?
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6 Responses to “Do You Have a Purpose?”
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I don’t perceive myself as having “a purpose,” but I do have lots of goals, and people things that motivate me to be a better person and to do the best I can with the abilities I have. With all that, who needs “purpose?”
I don’t perceive myself as having “a purpose,” but I do have lots of goals, and people and things that motivate me to be a better person and to do the best I can with the abilities I have. With all that, who needs “purpose?”
@the chaplain:
That sounds good to me. It’s always interesting to read how other people take different approaches from broadly similar starting points.
I manage perfectly well without a purpose. My ethical philosophy is a moderate deontological position. Since I am not a consequentialist, I don’t need any goal to strive for. I just try to do the right thing every day.
Knowledge and comprehension. What can I say- I love to know.
There is no need to concern ourselves too much on such matters. The one emotion and senses that every life form dread is pain and suffering. Therefore, if at all we must have a purpose in life, lets all make the purpose to prevent and/or alleviate pain and suffering where possible for all life forms that can experience it be the utimate one, immaterial as to whether they are humans or not. It might bring back meaning to the word, human.
Thanks,
Nick
Critical Critique