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What is the purpose and meaning of life?

Religion has always tried to give an answer to such questions. Life is important because God gives us life – whether directly or indirectly – and he has a larger purpose for us. Sometimes the assumed purpose is generic (God created us to love us, so that we could love him, and/or so that we could live happily forever with him). Sometimes the assumed purpose is specific, but unknown: when something bad happens, people take consolation in the notion that “everything happens for a reason.”

The real power of the religious answers lies in their emptiness. We can’t imagine why God thinks it’s a good idea that a baby is born with a painful congenital illness, suffers and dies, but we assume that God is wiser than we are, and that’s good enough for some people. We can’t quite imagine how we could be happy forever in heaven doing nothing in particular, but again, we assume that God has it covered. These things are conceivable, and if you choose to believe them, they may indeed comfort you. But there is no good reason to accept such beliefs, and if you lack them, or are trying to figure out if you can get by without them, then you need a different point of view.

The meaning and purpose of life can come from two sources: from outside of you, or from inside of you. In general, the meanings and purposes that come from outside are weaker. Often they don’t take hold at all.

We’ve all had this experience. Our parents or our teachers or maybe a boss or some friends are trying to tell us why certain things should matter to us, so we’ll change our behavior or attitude. But for whatever reason, what they’re saying doesn’t work for us. Maybe someday it will, maybe they’re even right about all of it. But until we feel a certain goal or purpose resonating within ourselves, it doesn’t really exist in us. We might go along, but it’s not because we feel their purposes as our own.

Relying on God for your purpose in life, or for defining the meaning of your life, is a lot like that.

It is not like that for everyone, of course. If you, for whatever reason, have bought into the idea that God is really looking out for you personally, and in the end is going to make sure that what happens to you will work for your benefit somehow, then that can be legitimately meaningful, and it can help give your life a purpose. It would be more meaningful, certainly, if you knew what the purpose was, and if you could buy into that specific purpose, rather than just having generic trust. And some people do have that: they believe that God is personally interested in their own salvation, something that they, too, believe in and want, perhaps desperately. So religion does lead to a true personal commitment that gives meaning and purpose to life in some cases, and if that’s what you have, this essay is not for you anyway.

If, however, you have had some religious upbringing or experience, but it never got to that level, and all you have left is a weakened and generic sense that maybe God knows what’s best, either in general or in your particular situation, then you are not giving up very much if you let that go. It doesn’t give you much reason to get out of bed in the morning, or to do your best during the day. Something more specific is required.

We all need to feel that our lives are about something. We need a purpose that means something to us. It is not enough if that purpose comes from outside – whether from parents, or from God, or from anywhere else – unless we embrace it as our own. And once we do that, it no longer comes from the outside. It is now ours, it comes from the inside, and the original outside source, if there was one, becomes unimportant.

How do we acquire such a purpose, though? Although, as acknowledged above, religion can be the original source of that kind of personally embraced meaning, it is not the usual source or by any means the only such source. You can have that with or without religion.

Meaning and purpose in life are usually found in one or more of three places:

· How we want to be. This means making the most of who we are: becoming the person we want to be, however we define that. It has to do with integrity, skill, education, wisdom, body image, goodness, courage, kindness, and every other virtue or condition that we value.

· What we want to do. This usually reflects How we want to be, but it is mainly oriented toward the results of that. It has to do with either specific goals we want to achieve, or activities we want to perform (teaching, healing, building, creating, discovering, achieving a secure living, having fun, etc.), or both.

· How we relate to others. Again, this often ties in with the other two, but it can provide some of the most appealing sources of meaning and value in life. It takes into account our roles with regard to those we love and/or are related to, our friends, our co-workers, our teammates, our neighbors, our fellow citizens. We may find meaning in the comfort and joy we bring to others, to serving their needs, making their lives better and happier, making them laugh, easing their pain, offering them hope, and supporting their own goals and desires, as well as from the same benefits they provide to us.

Of necessity, these are generalities. There is no definition of life’s meaning or purpose that applies to everyone. Our DNA and our experiences differ, and so what is important to us differs from one of us to the next.

Furthermore, there need not be (and generally ought not to be) just one overriding meaning or purpose in life. Most of us already have a lot of meanings and a lot of purposes in our lives, and people who have just one are usually emotionally and socially imbalanced. We each have tendencies in lots of directions. Of course, we can’t pursue all of them, but we can follow more than one. We can try to be, for example, intelligent and compassionate and ethical. At the same time, we can pursue a particular career, and particular hobbies, and other interests, all of them meaningful to us. And we can also love those around us, performing our role as child, spouse, lover, sibling, friend, helper, or whatever it may be, as regards the various people around us.

Each of these adds purpose and richness to our lives. It’s not that there are not enough sources of meaning, rather that there are way too many. We can’t possibly be and do all the things that we would potentially like.

The overall purpose of our lives, then, is to be and do as many of those as we can – particularly those that well suit our abilities, personalities, and situations. And when we do that, life has meaning and value for us – God or no God.

Of course, all this raises some questions.

How do we choose?

If you feel that you lack purpose in your life, and if your life feels meaningless at present, this is probably because you are depressed (which a psychologist or psychiatrist could probably help you with), and/or you lack satisfying ways of Being how you want to be, Doing what you want to do, and Enjoying how you relate to others. Unless the cause is psychological, therefore, and oftentimes even when it is, you need to work on these things. You need to find some meaning and value.

But how?

We do it by guess, instinct, advice, reason, and trial and error. In adulthood, finding fulfillment in life is usually more a matter of discovering than of choosing. As we mature (a process that takes decades), we learn more and more about who we really are, about what we are good at, what pleases us, what works for us – even as we are changing all the while. At the same time, we learn more about life’s possibilities – in terms of options about How we want to be, What we want to do, and How we relate to others. We try to make smart decisions, and we try to take advantage of unexpected opportunities. If we are wise, we experiment – meeting new people, learning new skills, trying out new experiences, listening to what works for others.

There is no secret strategy that works, and as always in life, it’s better to be lucky than to be smart. Luck, however, is outside of your control, except for this: if you are open to new things, you are more likely to be lucky. And if you keep working on expanding your knowledge and skills and connections with other people, and if you maintain positive attitudes, more opportunities will come to you, and you will be more prepared to seize them when they do come. There is not just something (or someone) for you, there are many somethings and someones for you.

You’ll know them when you see them, but you won’t see them unless you look for them. If you just wait for them to come to you, they probably won’t – or at least, the ones that do will not be as good as the ones you could have found if you had put a little effort into it. Keep trying new things, keep meeting new people, keep looking for ways to make yourself into the person you really want to be. Purpose and meaning will follow.

What about “selfish” purposes?

So far, we have tried to allude mainly to noble purposes: self-actualization, serving others, loving others. But face it, a lot of people seem to derive their purpose from baser motives: the desire for wealth, celebrity, or power; the wish to lord it over others, or even to harm others. Criminals, after all, may be full of purpose, even though it’s a bad purpose.

As we saw in the middle chapter of this little book, though, morality does not go out the window when religion does. Leaving your religion behind – or not having any in the first place – does not make it prudent or wise or moral to be evil. It is also worth pointing out that for most people, evil purposes don’t really work in the end. Yes, once in a while crime does pay, the bad guy ends up with the girl, the person with a dark soul comes to power. But such people rarely feel happy or fulfilled, even when they are overtly successful.

Sometimes things that are not good for us feel good, for a while. When looking for meaning and purpose in life, as when looking for anything else, it is easy to be fooled initially. Our excitement and enthusiasm for the new thing or the new person clouds our judgment. But in time, what is not right for us begins to feel unsatisfying. You should not look for “good” purposes that don’t suit your interests and personality, but neither should you settle for the excitement of “bad” purposes just because you think you can. Neither strategy has staying power.

So try things that seem right and good, or at least morally neutral – not all of those will work for you, but some of them will. Try to avoid things that are wrong or bad, because those will seldom if ever work over the long haul.

What if it’s all fundamentally meaningless?

We can’t leave this general topic, though, without taking a last look at meaninglessness. If there is no God, and the universe is morally neutral, and our own sense of morality is just an artifact of evolution, isn’t life basically meaningless? And if it is meaningless, aren’t we just kidding ourselves if we seek purpose and value there?

The answer to both questions is “yes – sort of.” But this does not have to be a problem.

Let’s return to the idea of life as the equivalent of a story or a game. In the context of overall reality, a story or game has no real meaning. It is essentially an amusement, and usually nothing more than that. Nothing that happens in the story or game need have any significance outside of that limited context. Yet we love a good story, and thrill to a good game. Why is that?

The reason is that when we enter into the spirit of a story or a game, a new context for meaning is created. What happens to fictional characters does matter within the novel you are reading or the movie you are watching. Who scores the most does matter within the context of the game you are playing.

Your life is like that. In the context of the universe it makes little or no difference. The universe no more changes when your life ends than it does when an ant or a weed dies. But within its own context, your life does matter, because it matters to you and to the people who are connected with you. “Meaning” is not some abstract entity out there. To say that life has meaning is to say that it has meaning to someone. That someone could be God or the Devil, but even if it were, what means something to such a personage does not necessarily have to have meaning to you.

As we saw before, meaning that comes from the outside (i.e., because it is meaningful to someone else) is a weak form of meaning. The strongest meaning comes from yourself. The principal meaning of your life, therefore, is the meaning that you find in it, create in it, value in it. It doesn’t matter if your existence has no purpose for the universe – as long as it has purpose for you, that is purpose enough, and better than any other possible meaning.

This way of looking at it is also liberating. If your primary purpose for existence were actually defined by the universe or by some outside Being, then you would not be truly free. Yes, you might have the ability to accept or reject that purpose (i.e., you could be a “saint” or a “sinner”), but that is only the freedom to brand yourself with someone else’s mark.

If the ultimate definer of your purpose in life is you, however, then you are much freer. You are still not perfectly free, of course, because you are constrained by biology and by society and by your own experiences and preferences. But at least you do not have to place the meaning you find in your life under some kind of cosmic microscope, and have it judged by standards invented somewhere else.

Freedom is always a little scary, of course. If you have to find your own sense of meaningfulness, that puts a bit of a burden on you. For most people some of the time (and for some people all of the time), freedom is uncomfortable, even paralyzing. Sometimes it is so much easier just to be told what’s what. But in the end, such submission is oppressive, and the submissiveness it engenders is demeaning. Freedom is the best thing going, provided you embrace it, and provided you put out just a little effort to make it work.

If you do that, and if you try to be insightful about yourself and open to life’s opportunities, your life will be as meaningful and fruitful as it could possibly be.

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