Meaning of life? Doesn’t it consist in finding great love? Or have children? Or to realize yourself? Or all at once? Hmm … let’s see!
With all love, ecstasy and joy – life can be very exhausting! This permanent metabolism, hunger, thirst, fatigue, hormone fluctuations, back pain, aging … phew! Then there are things like separation pain, pressure to perform, wanderlust, inner conflicts and insecurities that keep us awake at night and make us wonder about the meaning of life … Manno man. And to top it all, it currently looks as if we humans are destroying the environment and as if the earth would be better off without us. No wonder that one or the other asks themselves the question now and then: why is all this …?
Purpose of life: 11 signs yours has one
First of all, the good news: You don’t need to know the meaning of your life to have a meaningful and good life. For example, look at children, jellyfish or toadstools: They all live to themselves, undeterred and exactly as it should be for them, without being able to explain the meaning of their life to themselves or to you.
Sure, we are neither children (except maybe in our hearts) nor jellyfish or toadstools, but that just means that our life should be different from that of a child or a jellyfish if possible. After all, we have completely different options and requirements. How should it look? If you can tick one or more of the following, something like yours!
- You get up (almost) every morning.
- You don’t wanna die
- You see some things differently from those around you.
- When you’re hungry, you eat (mostly and when possible).
- There is or has been at least one person who loves you.
- There is or has been at least one person you love.
- You have at least one memory that makes you happy.
- Your heart has been broken before and you survived.
- Sometimes you make gut decisions.
- You would like to experience something new.
- You would accept unpleasant changes in order to be able to go on living.
Meaning of life: what is it actually about?
Has that settled the question of the meaning of life? Nope! Probably not for most of them. Finally it falls z. For example, it is much easier to overcome phases of separation or to endure a serious loss if you know why.
However, we are already at the bad news: In all the millennia in which people have thought about the meaning of life, no one has yet found an answer where everyone clapped their hands and said: “So! If we had finally sorted that out.“So we shouldn’t have too much hope …
One of the problems with the clarification of meaning is that yes the question is not entirely clear:
- What is the point? Is it the same as purpose? Or how meaning?
- Which life is actually meant? Mine? Yours? That of an adult? Or life itself?
Fortunately, we don’t have to answer all of these individually, because we know our main intentions to deal with the meaning of life. We want to know …
- … how we should lead our lives (so that it makes sense).
- … why we should hold out, even when everything is stupid.
Again, the answers are sooooo easy! ?
Purpose of life: how do I lead a meaningful life?
Some think they have to do something great to have a particularly meaningful life, such as: B. Thomas Edison, Nelson Mandela or Lady Gaga. In truth there is none particularly meaningful life – every life lived is equally meaningful. When asked what a successful, meaningful life looks like, there cannot be one or a few, but only tens of billions of different correct (!) Answers, for the following reason: The success story of life is based on diversity and individuality. From the simplest single-celled organisms, innumerable species have developed with which we share our living space. Daisies, peat mosses, octopuses, lions, giraffes, bees, people. Together we have all areas of the earth filled with life: Water, forest, desert, sky, glacier …
What do we get out of it? If our living space z. B. suddenly changed drastically, we have a good chance that one or the other form of life will be preserved – and that life itself will be preserved.
What does that mean for our lives now? Very easily: Obviously, the number one priority in life is self-preservation or self-care. Whether a priority of this kind is now the same as meaning is debatable, but one thing is for sure: If you are convinced by the success story of life and if you would like to participate, you should try it Make self-care a priority in your own life as well.
But that’s not all.
So that the concept of life really works, we as individuals have to live out our very special peculiarities in the best possible way or as much as possible. Why? For example, if a gazelle behaved like a lion instead of a gazelle, it obviously wouldn’t be playing the game. If we, as humans, let ourselves drift in the sea like jellyfish, we would break the rules as well – and probably die too. Exactly the same is true at the level of the individual, especially for us humans.
The peculiarity of man
As humans, we differ from many species in that, among other things, we more freedom and opportunities to have. For example …
- we don’t necessarily all have to reproduce in order for our species to be preserved.
- we can move around, and thanks to cars, trains and the like, we can do so pretty quickly.
- we do not need to go to great lengths to supply our bodies with nutrients or to protect ourselves from the weather and the seasons.
- we can plan our future and recall past experiences in order to use them for present decisions.
All of this gives us a lot of time and energy to deal with other things like the meaning of life. Even if we sometimes find it exhausting and therefore cannot fall asleep: That’s just part of being human.
It is through these freedoms and opportunities that man is a way of life with particularly blatant differences in individual characteristics. Two lions may have different territories, families, hunting grounds, etc. Two people have different professions, hobbies, habits, cooking skills, talents, ways of dealing with emotions, scriptures, and and and. This is the very special feature of our species: Although we are all equally meaningful and valuable to the bigger picture, we are extremely different.
This results in the clearest instruction or task that life places on each of us: We should live as it feels right to us. After all, whoever lives the way others pretend or do it doesn’t have to be there himself – because THAT could be anyone and maybe even a chimpanzee. (Not that we wanted to, but by the way, striving for certain ideals of beauty or compulsively following every trend would be the most senseless thing we could do with ours …)
Purpose of life: why persevere?
Looked at soberly, the task of self-care already tells us to persevere, even when it gets uncomfortable – but unfortunately that’s not a particularly great motivation. But how about that: It is guaranteed to go uphill again! The older we get and the more depths we survive, the more confidently and more strongly we master crises of meaning and life. On the one hand because we know that we can, on the other hand because our experiences have taught us that life can always turn out well. But with that we are no longer with the meaning of life, but with the meaning of hope …