What am I doing here?

"What am I doing here?"

Have you ever asked yourself this question? I don't mean the website. I don't mean the chair on which I sit, the keyboard I am typing on, or the monitor I am gazing at. I don't mean the suburb of the city of the country of the continent of the planet in which I live. Nor do I mean this human vessel I occupy that distinguishes me from other human beings. What exactly do I mean then? Well, it is hard to explain. It's a sort of feeling; a gripping, uneasy, doubtful sensation that has one yearning for something more, something greater - something better.

Perhaps I mean something closer to a purpose or meaning for being here at this exact moment in time. It's strange to examine yourself externally and critique what is wrong and what you are missing out on. I always thought that the most important things in life were happiness and fulfilment. But what are the driving motivations behind these virtues? What makes happiness and fulfilment necessarily good qualities to strive for? Am I not just conditioned to pursue something that seems close but remains firmly out of reach?

Or maybe I am merely conditioned to find dissatisfaction when there is ample opportunity to grasp happiness and fulfilment. Either way, I am at a crossroad. I have a myriad of questions for which nobody can answer. After failing to find the answers without, I have attempted to search within. So far, this endeavour has been a colossal failure and I am left more starved for answers than ever before.

Does anybody else experience this feeling?

reply to post by Dark Ghost


Thought provoking and well written. Star for you.

I'm not so sure you want your answer for what would you have left to seek?

You aren't here for any reason, none of us are. Just live your life and enjoy it as much as you can by living how you want to live.

reply to post by aivlas


If we have no reason to be here, then whats the point of even living out your life? If i had to live knowing i had no purpose then this is hell.

reply to post by Newagekid2012


Unfortunately it doesn't work like that but if believing that makes your life bearable then great, continue thinking that way and enjoy your life.


If you want to look at it another way your here to survive and reproduce


or delusions of grandeur

a few times have pondered over that question ..... still do at times... the answer is elusive...... when was younger the answer I found is different than the ones found as got older.... perspective changes with age....

reply to post by Newagekid2012


That's the dilemma.

If there is an ultimate purpose to my life then how do I find out what it is?

If there is no ultimate purpose to my life then what is the point in living?

Both questions leave me with a sour taste in my mouth.

Originally posted by Dark Ghost
"What am I doing here?"



Does anybody else experience this feeling?

Frequently.

"Well, I am an idiot walking a tightrope of fortune and fame
I am an acrobat swinging trapezes through circles of flame
If you've never stared off in the distance, then your life is a shame
And though I'll never forget your face,
sometimes I can't remember my name"

Mrs. Potters Lullaby
-Counting Crows.

I know what we are here for. We are here to help others. I just wonder what the hell the others are here for.

reply to post by Dark Ghost


What am I doing here?
I am biding my time, while awaiting the inevitable.



As we grow older, we change. Over time, there is much that we eventually lose. Now of course, there are also many things that we may also gain.


However, this is the way I see it:
Memories are the final pieces that we have, aside from the body. Even if the memories have managed to remain intact up until that last breath, they will still never make it beyond the death of the body.

There are billions of paths that have been taken by billions of people throughout their lifetimes, but that really doesn't matter, because the end result is the exact same for everyone. Everything that is us, will be gone. So what's the point?

Nothing matters.
Nothing!

Have you ever thought that maybe you are just here for the experience?

Maybe the earth is just a big theme park or a classroom and our purpose is simply to experience it

Originally posted by Dark Ghost
"What am I doing here?"

Have you ever asked yourself this question? I don't mean the website. I don't mean the chair on which I sit, the keyboard I am typing on, or the monitor I am gazing at. I don't mean the suburb of the city of the country of the continent of the planet in which I live. Nor do I mean this human vessel I occupy that distinguishes me from other human beings. What exactly do I mean then? Well, it is hard to explain. It's a sort of feeling; a gripping, uneasy, doubtful sensation that has one yearning for something more, something greater - something better.

I think I know what you mean. It's that gaping hole we all need to fill with something. Some do it with religion or philosophy, some with food or drugs. Personally, I try to fill it with knowledge. There are enough exiting developments coming out of the fields of quantum physics and space exploration alone, too keep me happy. Some of the other fields I have fun reading about...
Body Language
Voice Tones
Non-violent Communication
Rapport
MBTI Personalities
Psycho-Analysis (standard)
Psychometric
System intelligence
Mentalism
Honing Intuition
Logical Fallacies
Critical Thinking
Reflective Thinking

Originally posted by Dark Ghost
Perhaps I mean something closer to a purpose or meaning for being here at this exact moment in time. It's strange to examine yourself externally and critique what is wrong and what you are missing out on. I always thought that the most important things in life were happiness and fulfilment. But what are the driving motivations behind these virtues? What makes happiness and fulfilment necessarily good qualities to strive for? Am I not just conditioned to pursue something that seems close but remains firmly out of reach?

I once thought happiness would mean being fulfilled, but i have come to think it is just a chemical reaction caused by the brain, it's not everlasting. Accepting suffering as part of life was a bit of an epiphany for me. Once a day I would try to feel empathy for those in horrible situations. When you can imagine how a starving child in a war torn country must feel, it's hard too feel sorry for yourself. I found eastern practices very helpful, meditation, yoga, solitary contemplation, etc. But I think I get more out of the fields mentioned above these days.

Originally posted by Dark Ghost
Or maybe I am merely conditioned to find dissatisfaction when there is ample opportunity to grasp happiness and fulfilment. Either way, I am at a crossroad. I have a myriad of questions for which nobody can answer. After failing to find the answers without, I have attempted to search within. So far, this endeavour has been a colossal failure and I am left more starved for answers than ever before.

Does anybody else experience this feeling?

I don't think its a matter of being fulfilled or not. We are all trying to fill that hole in our life, but as far as I can tell it is a bottomless pit. Some are just better than others at pretending they have filled it.
How are you trying to look inside yourself? as I said, Buddhist/ Tao philosophies where very helpful to me, but everyone is different. What sort or philosophy do you have? what questions concern you the most?


I always like too remember that, "We live on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam"...

Originally posted by Dark Ghost
reply to post by Newagekid2012

 

That's the dilemma.

If there is an ultimate purpose to my life then how do I find out what it is?

If there is no ultimate purpose to my life then what is the point in living?

Both questions leave me with a sour taste in my mouth.

Like those who invented purposes and sold it too the masses, we must create them ourselves. We are living the ultimate purpose, living the reward and always enacting our goals by living.

Good post.

reply to post by Dark Ghost

What makes happiness and fulfilment necessarily good qualities to strive for? Am I not just conditioned to pursue something that seems close but remains firmly out of reach?

The pursuit of happiness/joy/success/ecstasy can indeed lead to disappointment.

This is because pleasure is like a drug - we develop a tolerance (lose appreciation) for the happiness we've achieved and seek the next dosage/level.

Have you ever noticed that the longer you go without your favorite food, song, hobby, etc. the better is it when you are finally reunited with it? This is because everything in life is relative.

While one person may grow weary of a small two bedroom apartment and long for a house, the person who has spent years in a tent or trailer might feel that the apartment is a mansion.

Eddie Murphy said that if a person were starving, a saltine cracker would taste more like a Ritz.

The bottom line is, we're living in a finite, material world where only so much can be achieved.
Even if mankind settled on Mars, we would not settle for that - we would want what's next.

I think life's biggest lesson is, be content with simply being alive, and you'll appreciate everything to the fullest.

I think your questions are the type that generally lead people to religion. Not that I'm condoning any one religion. But an ordered system of belief and faith does seem to help people with such existential issues as the ones you're grappling with.

reply to post by Dark Ghost

Many people wonder.

Before I started reading I could guess what you were going to talk about. I had a feeling that I could say something like "If there was a purpose to this life, you wouldn't be free, would you?" Now that I've read your post, I can say that I'm not far off. But you're more like "I want something better, or think I do."

I just read a story in Analog (SF magazine). Most of them are so and so. This story says that there's an after-life and it's hell. We're given a body in the afterlife explicitly made to receive punishment of all sorts. The protagonist says that the universe hates us and it's mostly our fault, but we can't change it, either. Even the best of us fall far below the expectations of the universe. Our destiny is to be punished. So the purpose of life, according to the story, is to live as long as you can to delay the eventual hell that's waiting for you on the other side.

That story is awkward. The only thing I can think to explain a story like that is that all of us did something very wrong before entered this life. And we entered this life to escape something that was hunting is. But when we die we will be exposed and the thing that's hunting us will capture us. What will it do? It's possible that what we did is so evil that we'll be punished. Hell!

This life is a puzzle. What's it? Nobody likes pain, but who wants dumb bliss?

I could ask every person on earth I think and they'd offer me a different answer. Some of them would be very very similar answers, but I think I could find something unique in each one.

You want to feel in control of this life? Not a pedestrian. An executive.

I used to think we define our purpose. But now I think our purpose is too deeply rooted into the place we're born. Everything around us from the houses and the city and the culture and our family and our friends and our body and our dna and the animals and so on. Last night I wondered if superdeterminism would disagree with me as a philosophy. I don't think so, actually. Technically, superdeterminism means that everything has an explanation; a cause and effect. If you were God, you could see every moment from the beginning of time to the end and see it with perfect clarity. Every person and every animal and every atom and every particle could be foreseen. There's no free will in a universe with superdeterminism since everything we do is predetermined and only has one possible outcome. If we were ever to see the future we could not change it, ever.

The problem with superdeterminism is that our research into Quantum Mechanics disagrees with it. It seems to have started with Quantum Entanglement. Particles that're removed from eachother will act in response to each other at that exact moment instantaneously without delay. This of course broke the rules of special relativity that enforced a speed of light limit for communication and travel. Initially, people like Einstein thought that there were hidden variables within the particles that led them to behave in exactly the same manner irregardless of distance. This would mean that the speed of light barrier would not be broken and all would be good. However, it turned out that there were no hidden variables. Instead science found that they weren't even communicating with each other so the speed of light limit is not being breached. The particles act as though they're outside space itself. This breaks either locality and/or realism. But the larger point is that since there were no hidden variables, it stands to reason that it's impossible to determine exactly how and what's going on with these particles. What this means, more broadly speaking, is that superdetermnism is impossible. There're thigns about this universe we will NEVER know and CANNOT know. Einstein was shamed by this failure to explain it and for the rest of his life tried to unify classical and quantum physics. He felt to his last dying breath that determinism exists, if we just had the knowledge to reveal it.

So while I do think our purpose is deeply rooted in our environment and we're not as in control as we'd like to be, I also think that nothing is set in stone. The future can be anything. We can't predict what it will be since determinism is restricted to only the most classical forms of physics. Even a small input of turbulence into our predictions causes them to be wildly madly off in a short time. This is quantifiably what quantum mechanics does; it introduces an input we cannot measure. Ever hear that a butterfly might flap its wings and cause a hurricane on the other side of the world? Well that's a similar idea. Our predictions will forever be constrained by this and limited.

(note: let it be known that these statements I make are NOT a prediction.)

From the POV of a bible believing Christian this is what I believe to be the reason we are here.

It is a test, no grade, just pass fail. We were put here with free will to do and be whatever we want. The point of the "test" is to weed out the truly evil souls. Most Christians who follow the bible believe that you have to be "saved" or in other words, accept the gift of salvation paid for in Christ's blood on the cross. They then believe that the "salvation" has to take place before physical death. Furthermore, they believe in the doctrine of "once saved, always saved" meaning that no matter what you do after salvation you cannot lose your place in heaven. It is on the last two points, in spite of being a Christian, that I differ.

First of all there are a good many people in the world, past present and future, who are not evil but never had, or will have, the chance to believe in the accepted biblical version of salvation while still alive. I don't believe that a truly loving God would condemn them to eternal hell for that. What I do believe is that they do indeed have to accept salvation, but may do so in the transition from corporeal life to spiritual life when they are confronted with the reality of who and/or what God really is.

Secondly, I believe that salvation can be lost if a person who is "saved" turns away from a godly life and becomes evil again. Some will say that if they were able to be saved in the first place that they could not revert to their past ways, and if they did revert they were never truly saved in the first place. That is a hair I am not ready to split yet without much more thought.

Originally posted by Dark Ghost
"What am I doing here?"

As a living creature, my purpose here is to help DNA continue to replicate. Through a series of highly improbable happenings, I have been animated to try and help life continue. That's pretty much it. Of course, while I'm alive, there are certain things that are a natural consequence of that -- such as allowing the universe to exist. I'm perceiving my existence, and therefore making it happen. If I wasn't here, the universe wouldn't be here, either.

I figure that the universe and reality are a kind of symbiotic but accidental by-product of living, however, I'm open to the notion that over the span of the universe existing, life (DNA or whatever else manages to cobble together something like consciousness) may have an actual plan to bootstrap the universe and itself into existence. Maybe I'm a very small but important contributor to that plan. But my existence is probably so limited I would have no way to even comprehend it.

In any event, because the universe is holographic, once I die and lose consciousness the universe will naturally collapse and cease to exist. At least from my perspective. Which is the only one that really matters, anyway.

Maybe you are here for someone else and just don't know who that person is yet. That's why you feel as you do. Being someone else's purpose to succeed in their life is not always as boring & unfulfilling as it may sound.

Or maybe the harder we look for meaning in our life, the harder it is to find and the bigger the disappointment. Life could just be simply life.

Of course, the ones that are continuing to seek answers probably contribute more to humanity in their life. Then ones that have no inclination for answers.

In the end i have no answer, but thanks for the thread interesting topic. Hope you find to answers to you question and if you don't keep looking