It's probably pointless and arbitrary.
I'll just enjoy the time I'm given.
this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2025
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This basically what I think too. I will add that I make sure other people (current and future) can enjoy it as much as possible too, so that means I will avoid anything needlessly destructive even if it is enjoyable
I don't find much joy in destroying in the first place. But then I guess you destroy a tree to create a chair, and creating is fun.
I'm on this boat too. Absurdism for the win IMO.
Yep I don't have any answer and making one up seems hollow.
Why does everyone insist life has to have meaning? We can just be here because here is where we happen to be. It's allowed.
The meaning of life (to you) could be to: "Just be here because here is where we happen to be."
It's not that deep, really. Some people want to have an impact, others just want to chill. I'm just curious what people's first response is to that question and so far I have seen lots of interesting comments.
I mean, it's kind of always/only as deep as we choose to make it, right?
That could be the meaning of life to me, but in truth I just don't see the world in a way that allows such a definite and easy framing. Meaning changes depending on context. What means to me today may mean nothing much tomorrow and, whether every individual realizes it or not, this is universally true. The question is a mess of a philosophical endeavor, and the more you take it apart and break its pieces down, the more ineffable and illusory the concept becomes. An often useful and positive illusion tbc, but not necessarily so as it can easily swing the other way, too.
So my point in not answering your question was to sort of nudge others to challenge their own relationship with the idea of meaning because...well because I think that is simply a meaningful endeavor.
In the spirit of being slightly less difficult than my mind often would like; I will say that I find a lot of meaningful purpose in getting others to see things from different perspectives. Reminding the world that, while boxes and labels do exist and do broadly serve their purpose, they also do not necessarily always do the job we often hope of them. I can't honestly say I believe there is a definite and true meaning to my life or any other, but there is still much we can do that is meaningful and worth doing. So, there. Seems to be as close as I can manage to giving you a straight answer today lol
Out of Spite.
To be the anomoly of the world.
As a "fuck you" to the Communist Party of China who didn't want me to be born for being the 2nd child.
As a "fuck you" to white supremacists and other political/reglious extremists that want me dead.
To make sure my abusive older brother doesn't get the gratification of me being dead. To call dibs on my parents assets when they die, to make sure he doesn't get my share.
To enjoy Movies, TV, Anime, read books, play videos games.
To explore the world one day.
To publish a book one day that people would want to read.
To form true friendships, real friendships.
And hopefully, when I find the financial stability and I win against depression, I kinda wanna start a family, to raise children that will grow up experiencing only happiness, and never ever ever have to experience the abuse I had when I was growing up, to bring more happiness into the world and thus making the world less sad.
Damn reading your message made me want to take revenge and I wasn't even wronged that much
Have as much fun today, without ruining tomorrow.
@canofcam@lemmy.world
Death. I mean, literally or, to be more precise, cosmically literally.
See, every living being relies on the death of other living beings in order to continue alive. Similarly, death relies on living beings (a dead being can't die again). I coined a Latin phrase that is quite similar to the Hermetic principle "as above so below": "Vita mortem manducat, Mors manducat vitam" (life devours death, Death devours life).
Death is the only certainty, the only truth, still living beings are wired to fear and avoid it (pointlessly, as there's not much left to do when the organs of a living being stop working altogether due to inexorable consequences of aging).
So, no matter how strange it may sound, the purpose of life is Death, literally. The true Mother Goddess.
With this perspective, is death really a 'meaning' to life, or is it rather a 'fuel' for more life?
If it's the latter, then that implies there is another meaning to life. There is a circle which keeps the wheel of life spinning - but where is the wheel going, and why?
The ultimate death of everything, perhaps, in which case I suppose you are correct.
@canofcam@lemmy.world
To me, it's more of the former. It's fuel only in the eyes of materialistic pursuit, which is a subset of survival instinct. When one let go from the mundane, when one wakes up to the fact that we're taking nothing with us after we cease existing, when one wakes up to the fact that what we call as "we" or "me" are illusions of a emergent property from principles of physics (sentience from a dynamic system of electric signals flowing through a self-organizing structure "living being"), then if gets easier to see death (and Death, the noumenon, which I symbolically see as "Death Herself" as in Morana, for example) as meaning rather than "fuel".
As for where is the cosmic wheel going, IMHO the answer is likely: to itself. Order emerged from chaos (Ordo Ab Chao) and chaos emerge from order (Chao Ab Ordine) and the cosmic cycle goes on indefinitely. Life, and by extension humans, are just a tiny part of the order which emerged from primordial chaos (Science calls it Big Bang, Sumerians called Her Tiamat) that's going to return to the same chaos (the inexorable "falling" towards maximum state of entropy).
based take
This reminds me of my take a bit. The meaning of life is “Living to die”, meaning you live life to choose how you die. It’s more symbolic way of living more than anything else, because many things do factor into your death.
To crush my enemies. See them driven before me, and hear the lamentations of their women.
Simply to be a good person & make sure my kid sees it through the day.
Life is meaningless but not without purpouse
I tend toward the point being the journey type of thing and closely related that you are what you do (ie you define yourself by your actions). I would add to this my current intrepretation of buddhism which is mostly about acceptance of the wysiwyg universe. Morally im an ethic of least harm type.
"Is this the reason why I was put in this desolate place? To find that happiness isn't a place or thing, but a person?"
It's something I read a few weeks ago. For me it's the people I love that keep me clinging to life. Making sure they're alright and taken cared for.
There isn't really any meaning or reason for it. History remembers a select few, but most people are not destined or expected to do anything more than live. I expect to be an unremarkable footnote that enjoyed a few comforts, built some furniture, and moderately positively influenced a small handful of people. I don't really have a set of grand aspirations, I just wanna do a few fun things for 30-50 more years (optimally).
Cheese.
There isn't one. It's a sandbox so you define your own. My own is to make my corner of life a little nicer than before I was here.
Don’t be a bigger asshole than you need to be. People are STRUGGLING right now. Try not to add to that.
None that I can think of which I think it's fine. I try to just make the most out of my life doing stuff I want to do.
Survive and try to thrive.
Reading The Power of Now helped with this.
There is only Now. So live for it.
I don't have the meaning, but I try to make small goals in life that will draw full picture of my life. Currently need stable job and money to move out and live alone.
The purpose of life is to gather data and reflect the universe around it through adaptation.
It is without intrinsic meaning but the meaning that I give to it is to try to end all suffering.
I wanna balance two sticks on a single stick
No dying till this is done
I'd say that improving as a person and leaving the world slightly better as you found it. I guess that's not meaning per-se but rather a principle to try and live up to.
Oh look, Harold's been eaten. Kind of makes you think doesn't it?
I don't have a meaning currently. The meaning that I was created for stopped being a thing since I was 3.
Ok I'll guess: you're a let's "save" our relationship by having a baby, baby?
Close enough. Which is why I think having a "purpose" is bullshit.
Just survive somehow
there isn't some grade arching meaning or purpose in life.
there is just shit that you do. or don't do.
way too many people are hyper focused on intent and day-dreaming, not enough on actual action.
to retire as early as possible so i can do the things i want instead of doing the things my employer wants.
~21 more years to go; i'm currently on track
I kinda wish I had this attitude when I was younger.
Toss me in with the "there isn't one," lot. You do or you don't do, and the brain keeps thinking until it doesn't. But I guess if I had to slap one on there, it'd be one of the most basic-level things that most all successful forms of life achieve: to propogate.
You exist because for hundreads of thousands of years things fucked, fucked, and fucked some more, until you got fucked into existance. Now go, continue the cycle, the fuckening must go on.
what I can do for others
To know what it's like to experience/be aware of emotions and feelings most of the time.
I do what I do, and every other version if me does what they do, for no reason besides that that's the way it is.
Purpose: be the adult I wish I had/helping special needs individuals and families.
Meaning: None. If I didn’t have offspring I would die. And even that is less motivating than it used to be.
Meaning ≠ purpose.
To experience existence as fully as possible. This includes every combination and variation all throughout time and space. However, while you think you are just poor little you, it's because you are experiencing disassociation from the source since your birth. Every one of us is really God, we just forgot.
So the next time you look at someone, think of it like looking at yourself in a fun house mirror: it's just another version of the truth. They are a reflection of you and you of them. The Universe is the same way.