Purpose

Before I continue I want to acknowledge that this is just my own opinion, I do not intent to disrespect anyones religion or culture, and am simply sharing my own thoughts on the matter.

I think the answer to the question "Why are we here?" is much simpler than people want it to be. 

I think that the universe is chaos, and it is just happenstance that we ended up here, alive and conscious.  

I am not confident as to whether or not there is a god, but I know that with or without God, the end result is the same, you are here. 

I believe we are here, for the same reason that a turtle is here, for the same reason that trees are here, or flowers, or bears, or fish. 

We are here to live. 

But humans are special.

We are special because we have the faculty to reason, and to make use of this reason in living our lives purposefully. 

We are here not simply to survive, but to thrive. 

We are here to experience, to spread good will, to make memories, to connect with others and have the time of our lives doing all of it. 

Think about your life in the long term. 

Visualize what your ideal self will look like in the future, what their day will look like, what their work will aim to do, what sort of people they will surround themselves with, and how they will interact with the world around them. 

Once this is done, work backwards to figure out what you can do today to start moving towards that goal. Start building habits that line up with your ideal habits. Start projects that move towards these goals. Do not expect to get to this point overnight. 

Do not expect to get there in even a week, month, or year. 

Play the long game, build your skills and projects one at a time, aiming to simply get closer to your end goal with every day spent. Once you have accepted that reaching your goals will take far longer than you would like, you can stop doing it solely for the results, and start enjoying the journey to get there. Your progress will compound, slowly, as you keep stacking skills, habits, and actions, until eventually you will reach a point where you can feel your progress deep in your soul as you grow and change as a person, metamorphosing into your best self.

Making every action you take purposeful, will also allow you to live a life free from regret, allowing you to rest easily in the knowledge that you are doing the best you can, to lead a life you are proud of. 

Living without regrets sometimes requires planning, ensuring that every aspect of your life that you think is important ( e.g. socializing, self care, working, learning, leisure, creative expression or fitness) gets the time and attention it deserves. 

Since most everyone feels busy with a never ending list of tasks, you need to actively plan time and energy to go towards each of these areas, making sure not to focus too much on any single area, which will cause a deficit of attention going to the other areas. 

The most successful people plan their day with time for all the areas of life outside of work, because no matter how much you love your work, you will be able to do it better and more sustainably if you prioritize balance. 

Living without regret also means making use of opportunities that cross your path. You should not over-commit yourself with too many of these opportunities, but you should be on the lookout for opportunities at all times, and make room for any opportunities that suit your goals, and your balance in life. 

Not everything you do needs to have value to the world as a whole, in fact many things you do should only have value to yourself. In other words, sometimes you should do cool shit, simply because you find it cool.

How you act should matter to you. How you present yourself should matter to you. Not because you should care about everyones opinion of you, but because you should care about your opinion of yourself and you should wish to hold yourself to standards that line up with how you wish to be. 

The best way to present yourself in a way that encourages self-respect and self-trust,  is to act with virtue. To act kind, because it is right. To act honestly, because it is right. To act courageously, because it is right to do so. 

Determine which virtues are important to raising your own self-trust and self-respect, and do your best to practice these virtues at all times. ( If you want to see a big list of all the different virtues you could choose to embody, I recommend asking chatGPT. ) 

Spread goodwill, not because everyone else does, but to be a model for how everyone else should be. People may not notice or care, but you will notice, and that is what is important. 

You do not need to flaunt your achievements or accomplishments, if someone wishes to take note, they will. Your actions should speak for themselves, you need not speak for them. 

I encourage you to think about how you think you ought to act. To break out of the autopilot of habitual routines and thinking and really question what you think someone who acts rightly would look like, and try your best to embody that. This way you are acting as you want to act, instead of acting simply as you are used to acting.

If the purpose of life is to exist, and to thrive during our existence as much as possible, then we need to build our existence around what we think thriving looks like. We need to ensure that we are not living life on autopilot, that we are not slaves to our stagnant routines and our shortlist of topics for thought.  

We should make our lives exciting, trying new things, doing cool shit, taking on big, and meaningful goals. We should take and make every opportunity we can to do something cool, and aim to live without regrets. We should make every action we take have a purpose and know that if we always make what we feel is the best decision - based on the current circumstances and information - in the present moment, we will never look back with regret. 

We should act in accordance with our morals and our sense of what is right, so that we may carry ourselves with confidence, because we have respect for ourselves and we trust in our own decisions. 

Most importantly, we should acknowledge that this is not a one time process. Living a life with purpose is a never-ending task that you must take on every single day. You should question everything,  what your definition or “right" is, why you do the things you do, why you believe the things you believe, to make sure that everything you do in your life comes from your own conscious decision to do it.