Lately, I've been thinking a lot about the reason for our existence, or, expressed in a more cliche manner, the meaning of life. When I was young, I didn't really understand what the big fuss was all about. Meaning of life? I thought. We're here! What's there to think about? I'm here to be awesome! But lately I've been trying to work it out.
One response I've commonly heard is that we're here to make the world a better place for later generations. I find this to be a little silly. It's like claiming to build a new section of road just so that someone later can build a new section beyond this section. What was point of the road in the first place? Where are we going?
I've come to believe that there is, in fact, no knowable purpose for life. Life itself is just the result of an awesomely unlikely sequence of events that, over the course of billions of years, fortuitously led to the scene that unfolds before our eyes. Unless you are a person of faith, a topic which warrants a completely separate discussion, there is not much significance you can attach to that.
This doesn't mean that life is pointless. We live, we breathe. We feel. Perhaps that is the most significant part of life. Experiencing the ride with people we care about. We may not know why we exist. But we're here together, and while we're here, we should make the most of it.
Yes, it wasn't very insightful. It was maybe even a commonplace evaluation of life, but that's what I've been thinking about lately.