What is the Meaning and Purpose of Life?

At some point in their lives, sci­en­tists, his­to­ri­ans, philoso­phers, writ­ers, psy­chol­o­gists and the com­mon man all wres­tle with this ques­tion — What is the pur­pose of life? Through­out the ages, philoso­phers have con­sid­ered it to be the most fun­da­men­tal question.

When you ask ‘Why do we eat?’ ‘Why do we sleep?’ ‘Why do we work?’ — peo­ple can eas­ily answer those ques­tions, such as ‘I eat because I need to live.’ ‘I sleep because I need to rest.’ ‘I work because I have to sup­port myself, my kids and my fam­ily.’ etc. But when it comes to what the pur­pose of life is, many peo­ple are con­fused, and the most com­mon answer will be, “I really don’t know!”

Dar­wini­ans thought the mean­ing of life was to repro­duce. Will Durant (the most noted philoso­pher of the last cen­tury), cap­tur­ing the predica­ment of post­mod­ern man, wrote, “Faith and hope dis­ap­pear; doubt and despair are the order of the day, it is not our homes and our trea­suries that are empty, it is our ‘hearts’.”, See, when it comes to mean­ing of life, even the wis­est philoso­phers are just guessing.

To seek­ing for oth­ers opin­ions and thoughts toward to this ques­tion, I posted it on my Face­book on 24 July 2010. I am truly appre­ci­ated my FB friend’s sin­cere con­tri­bu­tion and their response. Their thoughts and opin­ions are rock, to share with you, I decided to post their won­der­ful com­ments here to let you read them as well, see below.

Cahyadi Muliadi — My pur­pose of life is 2 serve GOD n bring a lot hap­pi­ness 4 my fam­ily (my mother, my broth­ers n sis­ter n nephew also 2 girl of my dream who not yet come n still work­ing on 4 that all until now may GOD Bless me n all of u .…Amiiiiin

Naeem Bashir Shaikh — Is to love, love n love — uncon­di­tion­ally — as far as humanly pos­si­ble? Even to have rev­er­ence for all forms of live. If we are not able to give life — we mustn’t, in any case take-one-away, as well? Per­haps, it’s all about ‘Rela­tion­ships’ in var­i­ous stages of evolv­ing, types n forms, etc?

Sammy Gunawan — Life is the high­est love gave from GOD, and by that also our pur­pose is to share that love .…. Through giv­ing time, atten­tion, and mate­r­ial in any form we have to — with no harm­ing — as many as GOD’s creatures

Raney Ng ?? — Am one who believe in karma?and that’s why some of them have good liv­ing, but some have to suf­fer the whole life but get noth­ing.. But I do believe life could be change or in another word, it could be bet­ter. Because myself have a very mis­er­able life until I real­ize, mate­r­ial life is not the main thing I should have chas­ing for … because it will never ends.. Is the sat­is­fac­tion from soul and spirit could release us. By doing char­ity, sin­cere sacrifice,contribution to the needy, is the things that could feed me n give me never-end hap­pi­ness.. Hence, life has change.. do not expect any pay­back from there, but it is.. Lucky because there for me since then, hap­pi­ness because be my fol­lower.. Pos­i­tive ele­ment sur­rounded me to chase away those neg­a­tive ele­ments.. With a sin­cere heart, be true, to love, yes.. it will lead u to your des­tiny.. I’ve learned not to blame, because life is once, for bet­ter or worse, we accept and make changes, we shall live it to the fullest with no regrets ..

Mum­taz Memon ?- The mean­ing & pur­pose of Life to me is to:

* Believe in the One­ness of Allah(SWT), the cre­ator & sus­tainer of the Uni­verse.
* Pray to Allah and keep on ask­ing His for­give­ness and for His mercy.
* To procreate.

Charles Lim Get Chin — LIFE Liv­ing In Full Eter­nity with God. God make us and we have to be with him now and eter­nity. Fol­low his ways and you will free from the ago­nies of strives which is brought about by not fol­low­ing his LIFE Style — Holy and Revered. Every­body has a ideal phi­los­o­phy towards per­fect life but not every one can attain it; hypocrisy is still the enemy and stum­bling block towards a per­fect char­ac­ter. Only God has juris­dic­tion over the benev­o­lence, the sin­less, the pure­ness, the peace full­ness or sim­ply attrib­utes of God­li­ness; humankind is just mere image of God in phys­i­cal flesh and endowed with Spirit of God and a freewill choose holi­ness or otherwise.

Frank Picini — This is the true joy in life, the being used for a pur­pose rec­og­nized by your­self as a mighty one; the being thor­oughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of nature instead of a fever­ish self­ish lit­tle clod of ail­ments and griev­ances com­plain­ing that the world will not devote itself to mak­ing you happy. Look, I don’t want to wax philo­sophic, but I will say that if you’re alive you’ve got to flap your arms and legs, you’ve got to jump around a lot, for life is the very oppo­site of death, and there­fore you must at very least think noisy and col­or­fully, or you’re not alive.

Dar­shana Weliv­i­tiya — My pur­pose of life is to give a best thing to the oth­ers and learn many good things from the world .….. I do as much i can give best thing to others.…

Phan Vi?t ??c — To me, liv­ing is to achieve great things, enjoy great wealth and share it to peo­ple around, regard­less of their iden­tity, their rela­tion­ship or their atti­tude toward life. Sim­ple, live to enjoy life ..

Qaiser Khan Kakar — I am work­ing for the uplift­ing of poor­est, deprived and mar­gin­al­ized com­mu­ni­ties, being a social activist the aims of my life is to save the lives other and give peace and edu­ca­tion to the deprived and dis­ad­van­taged seg­ments of the world.

Faisal Ali Akber — I think Life is a game and we’re play­ers of this game. Those who plays well get suc­cess. About Pur­pose i would say that every­one has own side to achieve goal.

AbFa­tah Abdul­lah — Allah cre­ates all jinns and human kinds for the pur­pose to wor­ship HIM. We are only ser­vant .…. act as ser­vant, total absolute obey to the Creator.

Yasamin Amin — Life is an exam for All human beings with sound mind and health God has cre­ated every­body with a mind to think log­i­cally to obey God rules which is Holy Quran … and fol­low the right path the path of true believ­ers .. think log­i­cally what is Good for Human beings accept it and what is not Good for u don’t not do it … only those passes in the exam who truly have fear in there hearts from Allah and trust on the Last Prophet (peace be upon Him)..

Wasif Sar­fraz — This world is just like an exam where we work to get our results, and results or CVs are well show­able where you’ve passed that exams with lots of extra-curricular that deter­mine how u face the world and situations ..

How, then, do you dis­cover the pur­pose of life? You can share your thoughts and opin­ions with us by post in the com­ment sec­tion below.