What is your goal in life, and how do you want to be remembered, if at all?

What is the meaning of life? To have fun as much as possible? To have lots of money? To have lots of love? To have as many children as possible? To fulfill your duty to your family or state? To become famous and well-known? To make a difference in the world, or to have your name immortalized in the pages of history?

Of course, every individual may have a different opinion. Some want to change the world; others, conform to it. What do you want your legacy to be? What really matters?

I have no life-long goal. I only have short-term goals, such as earning my degree. I assume after that, I'll want a job, and then I may have yet another goal after that.

Having as much fun as possible sounds like a plan.

I try to keep the friends close and learn from other people's experiences whilst staying open to many things.
Much like Roy, I do not have any long-term goals planned. Nor do I have many short-term goals.
Most of them just pertain to entertainment or pleasure.

Also, this.

I want an international corporation that revolutionizes business.

I'd tell you more...but than I'd have to kill you. How's that for revolutionary?

I'd like to do something significant for more than people who know me personally. Then I'd like to be able to fulfill both parts of this.

“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.”

Well you have to break it down really, into "The" "Meaning" & "Life".

+) "The."
This seems to imply that if life does have any meaning at all, it must be some sort of single and unique meaning.
I don't think this is the case. I think life, (in this instance, human life) to be meaningful precisely because each person's life is filled with very many different kinds and levels of meaning.

+) "Meaning."
Ignoring the more common uses of the word, meaning in this case seems to mean something like this:
What human life objectively signifies, what does human life mean objectively from the universes view (or God's view).
What one personally takes as meaningful during their own life. Ie. meaning is assigned to things by an intelligent agent (human being). Obviously, things have differing levels of meaning to different people. Because meaning is something subjectively assigned to things that are objectively 'meaningless' or 'a-meaningful'.
Another one would perhaps be purpose. Do our lives have specific purposes or is the purpose whatever we subjectively deem it to be?

+) "Life."
By lives we assume human life, but would you, in your worldview, think other forms of life would be meaningful or meaningless? Or at least, not as meaningful as humans? What about non-life. Rocks, sand, even the atoms that everything is composed of? Are they all objectively meaningful or meaningless? And of course, why?



People usually ask the question, what is the meaning of MY life, not so much what is the meaning of HUMAN life. Which really rounds off what I have been trying to tell you. Meaning is personal, its individual, its subjective. We assign value to things which, without intelligent agents, are simply value-less. Meaning is subjective, NOT objective.

Think of it this way, what if you looked up into the sky and asked "what is the meaning of my life??", and God boomed to you "have three kids, a steady job, and die at 82 from cancer.". Would you really be satisfied, with having meaning pushed onto you from an external source? Wouldn't you just naturally try to rebel? We are the ones that generate our own purpose and assign meaning, it isn't applied to us externally.

The meaning of life is to give existence purpose.

I'm livin'... well, I don't know, really. For good times.

Meaning of life:
Noun
life (plural lives)
# The state that follows birth, and precedes death.
# (biology) A status given to any entity including animals, plants, fungi, bacteria, etc. — and sometimes viruses — having the properties of replication and metabolism.
# (philosophy) The essence of the manifestation and the foundation of the being.
# (phenomenology) the subjective and inner manifestation of the individual.
# The world in general; existence.
# [...]
^wiktionary

My fantasy in life is to become a particular form of social engineer - namely, school teacher.
Plan, none.
Expected outcome, bleh.

My personal belief (mind you it is that of a 15 year old) is that the goal in life is to enjoy it. Don't sell your soul for success, enjoy the simple things (that doesn't mean go to post-secondary education, which I fully intend to attend).

I want to make a name for myself as an artist.

And I want to pass down my genes.

The meaning of life is a highly individual thing. It's a cliché but it's really what you make of it.

I recommend some lectures on existentialism which can be obtained through the "usual sources" on the Internet. Albert Camus's The Stranger is a good book to read as well.

I don't want to be remembered. I want to be there.

I want to be remembered for something... oh and be rich but that's a given.

We are basically animals, the animals' only purpose in life is to perpetuate the species. My goal in life : Stay alive, have a family, raise children, teach them how to survive.

Easy, simple.

Life - noun - the condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death.

Now tell me, what is the meaning of orange? Because that question makes as much sense as asking the meaning of life. Before you start asking what something is, you should first establish whether there is a what. People and their existential dellusions
--

The Purpose of Life

Does my life have purpose? No, quit looking for an objective answer. There isn't some super special awesome secret wisdom afloat-- because purpose means, "the reason for which something is done or created or for which something exists." Nice slight of hand, but it won't get too far. By asking, "what is the purpose of life," you assume that life has a purpose to begin with.
--

Defining your own Purpose of Life

One of the most remarkable traits of humans is our sentience. We have a capacity to make complex decisions and actively change ourselves. One such purpose is, "I want to live to create beautiful paintings." This has no objective or logical relevance. It is decided on opinion.
--

I always found it a hallmark of the human race that we have emotions and opinions. The shame is when we confuse them for logic and reason. Eating a donut is not logical- but it does not mean we shouldn't do it. Contrastively, when we're plotting the trajectory of a spacecraft, we should employ logic, not feeling-- unless of course, we're really really pissed off at some crazy alien bastards that stole your spaceship (fucking galaga, how do they do that D=).

I think you guys over think this. I see this question as being a very high end question, one that can be answered only abstractly.

What is the meaning of life:
What does this mean for you:
What is the meaning of your life:
What will you accomplish in the next 20 years:
10 years:
etc.

It gets moer specific as time goes on, but it isn't worth getting caught in the first stage of trying to figure out life only to realize its too late to implement it.

I think you guys over think this. Just live your life!

I want to edit my post : Life has no actual meaning since humans created the notion of "meaning", we obviously didn't created "life".

So I'd say that the meaning of life depends on everyone, what you do with it.

The meaning of my life is completely null and void, I have no idea where I'm going, and when I think about it I feel like drinking vodka until I fall asleep and never woke up.

But hey, I mostly don't think about my pathetic life because I work 70 hours a week with my father.

Edit : I'm really not saying that to have anyone's pity, and I hope I didn't broke any rule of the forum by writing that.

No it's not. I want to live in modesty. Even if I for whatever reason became rich, I would still want to live in modesty. I don't like excess ...


Looking at everything, I can see how insignificant and uninfluential anything I do will be on any significant scale ...
Looking at myself, I can see how that shouldn't be a reason to do nothing. But what does that leave me to do? I don't want to be a lazy, whiny little bitch ... but I don't know where to start.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on May 18 2011, 6:18 am by FaRTy1billion.