The meaning of life??

Question

What do you think it is??

Answer 1

Fear God and keep His commandments.

Answer 2

To get to know, serve and glorify our Creator, the Lord Jesus Christ.  John 3:16

Read the Bible, New Testament first.  I found answers there.  

Answer 3

Why must it mean something?  What is the meaning of anything?  There are wasps that lay their eggs in caterpillars and when the eggs hatch they take over the caterpillars mind and make it crawl onto the top of leaves so that birds will eat it because the wasp larvae need to live in the gut of a bird - oh yeah, the larvae also make the caterpillar's antennae pulse and glow so that the birds will notice the caterpillar even more.  What the heck is the meaning of that??!!??  

If the lives of the wasp and caterpillar have no meaning what makes humans so special that we should imagine that our lives have some kind of grand scheme?  

Having said that, I must confess that I too feel like I need meaning in my life.  I think this feeling, this need, is a universal human need.  So since I and everyone else seem to need meaning so badly why not decide to make the meaning a good one.  Buddha said that we should use our human life to try to ease the suffering of all living creatures.  I can't think of a more noble meaning nor one that will bring greater peace and satisfaction.

Good luck on your quest.

Answer 4

42

Answer 5

it would vary from day to day, your perspective and my perspective will change everyday so the main point of life is just being able to exist, like you are here and alive so just try to make sense of this life even though sometimes you think its useless.

Answer 6

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;...

Answer 7

Try reading "The Path of the Higher Self," Mark Prophet,

"The Reincarnation of Edgar Cayce?", Free and Wilcock,

"The Great Divorce," C. S. Lewis,

"Expecting Adam," Martha Beck,

"Freakonomics," S. Levitt,

"The True Story of the Bilderberger Group," Daniel Estulin, for a general informing and body of knowledge.

Answer 8

80% of humanity, the religious folks, don't need to ask the meaning of life, the church tells them....the supernatural explanation. But the rest of us can't swallow religious dogma, because there's no evidence. Nobody can prove that there life after death, that people are tortured or rewarded after life or that there's invisible spirits running around.

I've come to two conclusions within the past years and a half:

1. Life has no meaning

2. Life has a million meanings.

First, there's a certainty that death and annihilation awaits not only you, but the Earth in general. It's an astonomical certainty that our sun will supernova and leave the earth a burnt crisp, not to mention all the other extinction level events around the corner.

Second, the million things that give us meaning are the pleasurable experiences we can conjure up during the short period we are here on the earth, in the form of the relationships we have with our kids and other people, and the 'housekeeping' types of purposes. What i mean by that are the curing disease, ending hunger, improving literacy, reducing crime, preventing war, helping other kinds of things.

So the bottom line is, we only have a temporary meaning to life, to reduce pain and increase pleasure, other than that everything is lost to oblivion.

To be or not to be? "To be" is temporary and "not to be" is

inevitable.....

Answer 9

I don't know what it is, and I can't know what it is so I don't really care to worry too much about it anymore.

The only thing I know is that things are better when I'm happy, and I try to make decisions in my life that promote my happiness.

What promotes my happiness is EXTREMELY involved, but at some you will either pick a meaning in life and pursue it fully (and one day probably be disappointed or find yourself limited in your life), or ignore the question and do what makes you happy (you can't really go wrong if you're happy)

Answer 10

The philosophical question "What is the meaning of life?" means different things to different people. The vagueness of the query is inherent in the word "meaning", which opens the question to many interpretations, such as: "What is the origin of life?", "What is the nature of life (and of the universe in which we live)?", "What is the significance of life?", "What is valuable in life?", and "What is the purpose of, or in, (one's) life?". These questions have resulted in a wide range of competing answers and arguments, from scientific theories, to philosophical, theological, and spiritual explanations.

These questions are separate from the scientific issue of the boundary between things with life and inanimate objects.

Popular beliefs

"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. The responses are shown to overlap in many ways but may be grouped into the following categories:

Survival and temporal success

...to live every day like it is your last and to do your best at everything that comes before you

...to be always satisfied

...to live, go to school, work, and die

...to participate in natural human evolution, or to contribute to the gene pool of the human race

...to advance technological evolution, or to actively develop the future of intelligent life

...to compete or co-operate with others

...to destroy others who harm you, or to practice nonviolence and nonresistance

...to gain and exercise power

...to leave a legacy, such as a work of art or a book

...to eat

...to prepare for death

...to spend life in the pursuit of happiness, maybe not to obtain it, but to pursue it relentlessly.

...to produce offspring through sexual reproduction (alike to participating in evolution)

...to protect and preserve one's kin, clan, or tribe (akin to participating in evolution)

...to seek freedom, either physically, mentally or financially

...to observe the ultimate fate of humanity to the furthest possible extent

...to seek happiness and flourish, experience pleasure or celebrate

...to survive, including the pursuit of immortality through scientific means

...to attempt to have many sexual conquests (as in Arthur Schopenhauer's will to procreate)

...to find and take over all free space in this "game" called life

...to seek and find beauty

...to kill or be killed

...No point. Since having a point is a condition of living human consciousness. Animals do not need a point to live or exist. It is more of an affliction of consciousness that there are such things as points, a negative side to evolutionary development for lack of better words.

Wisdom and knowledge

...to master and know everything

...to be without questions, or to keep asking questions

...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 and be mindful of creation or the cosmos

...to lead the world towards a desired situation

...to satisfy the natural curiosity felt by humans about life

Ethical

...to express compassion

...to follow the "Golden Rule"

...to give and receive love

...to work for justice and freedom

...to live in peace with yourself and each other, and in harmony with our natural environment

...to protect humanity, or more generally the environment

...to serve others, or do good deeds

Religious and spiritual

...to find perfect love and a complete expression of one's humanness in a relationship with God

...to achieve a supernatural connection within the natural context

...to achieve enlightenment and inner peace

...to become like God, or divine

...to glorify God

...to experience personal justice (i.e. to be rewarded for goodness)

...to experience existence from an infinite number of perspectives in order to expand the consciousness of all there is (i.e. to seek objectivity)

...to be a filter of creation between heaven and h**l

...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 discover who you are

...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

Philosophical

...to give life meaning

...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 know the meaning of life

...to achieve self-actualisation

...all possible meanings have some validity

...life in itself has no meaning, for its purpose is an opportunity to create that meaning, therefore:

...to die

...to simply live until one dies (there is no universal or celestial purpose)

...nature taking its course (the wheel of time keeps on turning)

...whatever you see you see, as in "projection makes perception"

...there is no purpose or meaning whatsoever

...life may actually not exist, or may be illusory )

...to contemplate "the meaning of the end of life"

Other

...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 participate in the inevitable increase in entropy of the universe

...to make conformists' lives miserable

...to make life as difficult as possible for others (i.e. to compete)-

Answer 11

The first one thousand times people asked this question I simply answered 42, or that no one could know, but now it's really starting to get annoying.

What is your question really?

Do you mean what is our purpose while we're alive?

Or do you mean what is our purpose of being alive in the first place?

Answer 12

The meaning of life: Life encompasses all basic things: breathing, eating, generating waste, moving, seeking shelter, seeking to reproduce, surviving.

The second tier: feeling, thinking (irrationally), generating relationships

The third tier: achieving, being the best you can be, making your way into the world, to conquer many obstacles.

The 4th tier: protecting others, the weak, the helpless, seeking justice for those who suffered injustice.

The 5th tier: sit back and think about the meaning of life.

The 6th tier: achieve peace with yourself, the world, or even a/the god/s or god if you wish.

the 7th tier: the realization of all things, or the realization of your inability to know all.

Short answer?: its what you make life to be.

Answer 13

I have two possible theories:

1. 42

2. Biology is just plain amazing.  

Answer 14

Finding where you fit in it. Finding who you are, and enjoying it as much as possible. Growing and learning and experiencing all there is to life before its over and leaving prints of yourself behind.  

Answer 15

I believe that your question can only be answered by you, when you fill that God-shaped hole in your spirit.

Without God, there is no meaning to life. With God, life has meaning, even when things go wrong.

If you will check the book of Genesis in any Bible, you will discover that man was made in the image and likeness of God. And the purpose of man was to have fellowship with God.

Cultivating a relationship with God is the purpose of life.

Answer 16

Well I think it is to not ever have to answer this question again.. I think everyone wants to know and understand the meaning of life.. But we're not gonna find it on Yahoo Answers.. Unless it's divine intervention.. But seriously.. this question is asked so much.. Agh! You gotta look inside yourself to find the meaning of life.. Cause everyone has they're own interpretation.. Not one answer has ever been the same.. Similar, yes, but not exact.. Unless it's an answer that's been posted several times by the same person.

Answer 17

It doesn't mean anything but the search keeps you going.

Answer 18

1. For the universe to know itself.

2. To become Buddha.  That is, awake.

Answer 19

...to live each day in the moment and survive...

Answer 20

the meaning of life is to LIVE

think about that for a minute