Meaning of Life

The 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.

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. Many of these responses could be shown to overlap in many ways:

Survival and temporal success

...to live everyday like it is your last and to do your best at everything that comes before you
...to accumulate wealth and increase social status
...to advance natural human evolution, or to contribute to the gene pool of the human race
...to advance technological evolution, or to actively develop the future human
...to compete or co-operate with others
...to destroy others who harm you, or to practice nonviolence and nonresistance
...to die having succeeded in your purpose
...to gain and exercise power
...to leave a legacy, such as a work of art or a book
...to live
...to produce offspring through sexual reproduction or asexual reproduction (alike to number two)
...to protect one's family
...to pursue a dream, vision, or destiny
...to seek freedom, either physically, mentally or financially
...to seek happiness and flourish, experience pleasure or celebrate
...to survive, including the pursuit of immortality through scientific means (see life extension)
...to complete your list of life goals
...to find something to believe

Wisdom and knowledge

...to be without question, or to keep asking questions
...to find out the meaning of life
...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 try to discover and understand the meaning of life
...to understand creation

Ethical

...to express compassion
...to follow the "Golden Rule"
...to give and receive love
...to live in a way that you don't harm yourself and don't harm your environment
...to work for justice and freedom
...to live in peace with each other, and in harmony with our natural environment (see utopia)
...to protect humanity, or more generally the environment
...to serve others, or do good deeds

Religious and spiritual

...to achieve a supernatural connection within the natural context
...to achieve enlightenment and inner peace
...to achieve rebirth in the Pure Land
...to become like God, or God-like
...to be rewarded for your deeds
...to experience existence from an infinite number of perspectives in order to expand the consciousness of all there is (i.e. God)
...to be a filter of creation between heaven and hell
...to die and become a martyr
...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 worship, serve, or achieve union with God
...to disprove the existence of a or of all gods

Other

...to be emotionally fulfilled
...to find true love
...to live, love, and laugh
...to achieve self-actualisation
...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 live, and enjoy the passage of time
...to have fun
...to participate in the inevitable increase in entropy of the universe
...to make the conformists' lives miserable (see nonconformism)
...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 relate, connect, or achieve unity with others
...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 (see Buddhism)
...to seek and find beauty
...as there is no intrinsic meaning to life, to each individual, the "meaning of life" is whatever he/she decides it is. In that sense, every point above is potentially valid.
...an answer to the question "What is the meaning of life?" is that it is just simply being able to ask the question, "What is the meaning of life?" (see Sri Sri Ravi Shankar below)
...to determine a set of goals based on an individuals belief in the meaning of life and work towards the attainment of those objectives.
...to make life as difficult as possible for others
...a combination of any of the above.