The Purpose of Life
Life has meaning. The most basic purpose is survival. We humans must learn and adapt to meet the demands of life sufficiently to exist (survive).
There is the universe. Our world exists within the universe, right? Or universes if you insist.
When we observe the natural world — nature — we can readily see order, which Charles Darwin dubbed, Natural Selection, or “survival of the fittest.”
Examining humans in their contemporary, man-made environments, things get more complex. The political power of the elites confounds order by the human-focused “golden rule”— they who have the gold rules.
Yes, it gets messy. But let’s go with it having order overall — the big picture.
Focusing on the biggest picture — everything, all the universe exists. Everything is made of energy and therefore is energy. That is the fundamental substance of the universe. Physics has taught us that energy is neither created nor destroyed. It only changes form. The quantum theory breaks it down even more into matter and wavelengths that co-exist simultaneously, but I save elaboration for another writing.
There is order in the universe, although we only understand it in part. Where there is order, there is both function and purpose. Skipping over the quintessential metaphysical question — “Why are there essences rather than nothing?” — we conclude there is a universal creative force, which we can call the universal life force. This creative force, source unknown, is the ultimate, the divine, the One, the Creator — greater than any of us or all of us together.
Now we can step back and generalize with the broad assumption that all human existence follows a pattern. The pattern is generally, “You are born. You struggle. You survive. Sometimes you thrive. Sometimes you don’t. Eventually, you die.”
The purpose of life is to learn so we can adapt and not only survive but to do better, to thrive in life.
Furthermore, we must also consider the one universal, nonphysical law — the moral Law of Karma, which is simply, “From good will come good, from evil will come evil.” Or, you may prefer the Biblical version, “You will reap what you sow.” Also, there is the more crass, “Your past eventually ctatches up with you.” And, the street version, “What goes around comes around.”
From these things, we can conclude that the purpose of life is to live, learn, and be good to others by living out the Spiritual Golden Rule — treat others the way you want them to treat yourself, which comes from Judeo-Christian scriptures that say, “love your neighbor as yourself.” (Leviticus 19.19, Mark 12.31, Matthew 19.19, Luke 10.27, Romans 13.9, and James 2.8). Acting in this manner requires humility and compassion — the compassionate expression of caring about others as well as self and self-interest.
The outcome of such living is bound to be good, at least in the spiritual sense, and most probably in the physical, emotional, and social sense as long as we can act out acceptance of diversity with grace , gratitude, and forgiveness of mistakes.
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