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I have often pondered the purpose or meaning of life as we know it. I have come to the conclusion that if we encapsulate mortal life into what happens between birth and death – that it is impossible to conclude that there is justice, mercy or any reason for hope. And yet (religiously) we are led to believe that mortal life is a critical necessity for intelligent beings to evolve. I have concluded that basically there is two necessary purposes. The first obvious purpose is to obtain a physical body. The second purpose is to suffer, various pain and death. I have concluded this because this is the experience of ever sole that becomes mortal. Anything else is not that important? Certainly not necessary with the possible caveat that perhaps something for “extra credit”.
When I finished school and obtained my first job in what I thought would be my life profession – I wanted to accomplish something important. Within two weeks I had solved a difficult problem and received a letter of commendation from the division manager. I was so excited I contacted my older brother (an exceptional individual that was officially believed to be a genius). He looked at the letter without reading it and asked if I received any money as a bonus? I told him I had not. He told me the put the letter in the trash because apparently it was not worth a cent to anyone else.
I have pondered that much of what many desire out of mortal life (especially praise from others) like my letter – really is not worth anything of real or lasting value. I wonder what others expect to get out of their mortal experience.
Life has whatever purpose a person gives it. My twenty-something grad student son and I were chatting a couple weeks ago. He said something to the effect that he didn’t know what life was really about yet, but he knew it wasn’t about work. I agreed and told him related to that it wasn’t about accumulating money or stuff. And I said I knew it wasn’t about “all church all the time” (since we had been discussing someone we both know who quite literally is all church all the time to the detriment of many things including his family – I suppose that’s a different topic). Other than that I told him I hadn’t figured it out either and I am over 30 years his senior. Of course I recognize there are those who would have a completely opposite opinion than mine, and that’s fine. I don’t disagree with what Nibbler said – it seems by my observation that those who have the hardest time in day-to-day life are always worried about what they’re not doing or what isn’t happening or what everybody else is doing.
It’s one of those things God could have made a little (OK, a lot) clearer but since that’s not the case we seem to be left on our own again. (And I thank God for Deism!
:thumbup: )In the big picture, my thought is that we are here to experience whatever it is He wants us to experience. In the short term that is our current life, it’s nearly impossible to know exactly how we and our actions fit in His grand scheme and what our purpose might be. So why try? If it all will work out in the end, then just do whatever you find meaningful until then. As Gandalf said, “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
It will probably not be until future stages of our existence that we understand all the reasons for the events of our lives.
The biological imperative is to procreate. Thus the purpose of life is to create/perpetuate life. Watcher wrote:
it is impossible to conclude that there is justice, mercy or any reason for hope.
I wouldn’t say that. There is justice and mercy and hope in our mortal lives and human institutions – just not perfect justice, perfect mercy, and perfect hope.
Watcher wrote:
When I finished school and obtained my first job in what I thought would be my life profession – I wanted to accomplish something important. Within two weeks I had solved a difficult problem and received a letter of commendation from the division manager. I was so excited I contacted my older brother (an exceptional individual that was officially believed to be a genius). He looked at the letter without reading it and asked if I received any money as a bonus? I told him I had not. He told me the put the letter in the trash because apparently it was not worth a cent to anyone else.I have pondered that much of what many desire out of mortal life (especially praise from others) like my letter – really is not worth anything of real or lasting value. I wonder what others expect to get out of their mortal experience.
I think that to some, the commendation letter could have significant meaning. I have a friend that was employee of the month. He later had to stop working because of crippling anxiety. His post about winning the award came up on his facebook “memory” and I commented that the award was well deserved. He responded that it was the highlight of his life so far. If my friend’s life is more meaningful because of this award then that can only be a good thing (and far be it for me to minimize it in any way).
What has real or lasting value? For me the answer lies in relationships. When I die I hope to be rich in relationships. I believe that this is the moral behind the classic tale, “A Christmas Carol.”
For how much we talk about the importance of the mortal experience as part of the plan of salvation, it always seemed to me that a lot of it must not be that necessary. If a child dies before the age of accountability, we teach that it works out because they go to the celestial kingdom. So apparently the rest of mortal life is not so important that God doesn’t let that happen. I have also heard the mortal stage of the plan of salvation framed as our time to accept and learn the gospel and prepare to meet God. But if someone dies without the gospel (like the vast majority of people who ever lived), they just learn it in the spirit world. So it seems that part of mortal life isn’t so important either. I would tend to disagree that the purpose of life is to suffer. To me that feels quite bleak and makes our efforts to minimize suffering for ourselves and others seem futile or even counterproductive. I would say that from an LDS perspective the idea that makes the most sense to me is “men are that they might have joy”, and not just in the next life, but here and now.
However, as for myself I honestly don’t really believe there is any overarching purpose to mortal life. There was a point in my faith crisis where I lost all remaining belief in God and spiraled into an existential crisis. I had trouble with the idea of no remnant or sign of my existence remaining after my own death, the death of any posterity, extinction of the human species, heat death of the universe, etc. It was pretty depressing. I never came up with a good answer for the purpose of life, but I eventually started to feel differently about it to where I just accept that there may be no purpose, and if there is one I have yet to find it. In the meantime I will just do what I think is good and brings me joy.
Many thanks for all responses. I pondered if I should respond to each of the posts but decided to attempt a more general response. My first step in determining what possible intent all mortal life must experience – was to determine what every mortal must (regardless of all things possible) experience. In other words, what is the lowest common denominator for all mortals. As I listed in the initial post – I could only come up with two must happen experiences. The first is to obtain a physical body. The second is the experience of suffering pain and death. The reality is that there are many individuals whose mortal experience lasts but for a few moments and the aggregate of all of those moments are spent suffering pain and eventual death. Granted there are some individuals that experience many other things but the reality is that there is no one – not even the son of G-d that is born – and then leaves mortality without suffering and death. This indicates to me that suffering and death is absolutely necessary. If there is something else that is absolutely necessary then in order for there to be a G-d of truth and justice – then everyone that chose to participate in mortality – must, by right be given that experience.
A while back the Gospel Doctrine class was discussing dealing with trials. It seemed to me that the discussion was turning towards a lot of depressing ideas concerning facing the trials of mortality. I am a person that must connect logically to something before I can understand it, comprehend it or believe it. As I thought on this subject – I had the thought the perhaps we should choose to learn to enjoy our trials and so I shared that thought. My wife was a little upset with this comment and said to me that it cannot be a trial if we are enjoying it.
Perhaps I should give a little background to how I was taught by my parents. A saying of my parents was that the secret of life is not achieving what you want but in learning to love doing the right things that will enviably bring or result in what you want. My father who was born poor ended up very wealthy would often have individuals come to him for advice on how to become wealthy. His answer was always the same and was a two-step process. The first step he said was to learn to love and enjoy hard work. Do not learn to endure work but to find joy in doing the tasks that others avoid. The truth is that if you cannot find joy in something – you will eventually quit doing it.
The second step is to learn to love taking a portion of your earning and investing it. He would tell people that if you cannot find joy in these two steps – you will never be happy. You will ether be unhappy because you “have to” work or you will be unhappy because you do not have enough money to do what you want and love doing.
My thought is that it is impossible to enjoy mortal life if you cannot find any joy in enduring suffering and eventually death – because those are the only sure thing in mortality. I would be interested in any arguments that there is anything else guaranteed in our mortal existence.
I don’t equate shared experience with purpose. If everyone that went to a baseball game tested positive for covid, that’s a shared experience but I wouldn’t say that the purpose of the game was to spread covid.
I appreciate the logic of your thought process Watcher, I think it starts with some assumptions:
1) that everyone’s purpose must be the same
2) that everyone achieves that purpose
I like the equality of it all – that everyone receives what they came for and all the rest is just window dressing.
Watcher wrote:
My first step in determining what possible intent all mortal life must experience – was to determine what every mortal must (regardless of all things possible) experience. In other words, what is the lowest common denominator for all mortals. As I listed in the initial post – I could only come up with two must happen experiences. The first is to obtain a physical body. The second is the experience of suffering pain and death.
That works for a minimum of what the purpose of life is. Though once your born, and you know you’re going to die at some point, that leaves you to figure out what the purpose is for the in between stuff.
I don’t agree that suffering is one of the purposes of life. There may be a point to it, and we can grow from it certainly. But I had the same thought as nibbler; just because everyone experiences it, I wouldn’t say that means it’s the purpose of why we’re here. Sure there is suffering, but not all of life is suffering. There are good experiences that don’t require any suffering to experience. Which is why my answer was what it was. Our lives are so varied, that if there is any purpose to it, only He knows.
Perhaps some of our experiences are for our benefit, maybe some are for the benefit of others. And maybe those who die as infants were those who didn’t need to experience anything in this life. Again, only He knows.
Watcher wrote:
As I thought on this subject – I had the thought the perhaps we should choose to learn to enjoy our trials and so I shared that thought. My wife was a little upset with this comment and said to me that it cannot be a trial if we are enjoying it.
I agree with your wife. In a similar vein, hearing comments at church where people say things like, “I always ask myself, ‘What can I learn from this trial?’ or ‘What is Heavenly Father trying to teach me?’.”, has always bothered me. Trying to have a detached view of trials may help with smaller stuff. But, I doubt anyone can do that at the death bed of loved one. The ability to do that would be psychopathic.
Watcher wrote:Perhaps I should give a little background to how I was taught by my parents. A saying of my parents was that the secret of life is not achieving what you want but in learning to love doing the right things that will enviably bring or result in what you want. My father who was born poor ended up very wealthy would often have individuals come to him for advice on how to become wealthy. His answer was always the same and was a two-step process. The first step he said was to learn to love and enjoy hard work. Do not learn to endure work but to find joy in doing the tasks that others avoid. The truth is that if you cannot find joy in something – you will eventually quit doing it.
The second step is to learn to love taking a portion of your earning and investing it. He would tell people that if you cannot find joy in these two steps – you will never be happy. You will ether be unhappy because you “have to” work or you will be unhappy because you do not have enough money to do what you want and love doing.
That reminds me of the ’embrace the suck’ mentality you find in the military. It’s good for tough but beneficial things like exercise, work and investing. I try to incorporate that in my own life. But for things that are truly trying, things that hit you in your emotional core and there are no apparent benefits to it, that mentality falls short.
PazamaManX wrote:
In a similar vein, hearing comments at church where people say things like, “I always ask myself, ‘What can I learn from this trial?’ or ‘What is Heavenly Father trying to teach me?’.”, has always bothered me. Trying to have a detached view of trials may help with smaller stuff. But, I doubt anyone can do that at the death bed of loved one. The ability to do that would be psychopathic.
I disagree with the word “Psychopathic.” It has all sorts of negative connotations and approaches name calling (that is against StayLDS guidelines). However I do understand where you are coming from. DW and I recoiled at the idea that G-d was trying to teach us something from having a stillborn child because of the implication that G-d might have used less extreme measures if only we were less hard hearted. I think that this thought springs from the assumption that everything that exists (including experiences), is also somehow necessary.
Roy wrote:
I disagree with the word “Psychopathic.” It has all sorts of negative connotations and approaches name calling (that is against StayLDS guidelines).
Name calling is far from what I was trying to do. My mention of it was just referring to the disconnect that can go along with psychopathy. I wasn’t saying that anyone who asks questions like that or tries to do so in a traumatic situation is a psychopath(I hope that was obvious).
But, I can see how someone might find offense in how that was worded.
At the risk of repeating what some others have already said, I had originally intended to quote and comment but I think just adding my comments (repetitive or not) might be more concise. There is no question almost all of us suffer (the argument could be made an infant who died shortly after birth without a serious defect might not have suffered). The thing that has always struck me is that some of us suffer way more than others. And that suffering isn’t only or always always physical, it can be mental and/or spiritual. Some suffering could be brought on by ourselves, but other suffering seems to be random and sadly some is inflicted by others (sometimes purposely). There seems to be no justice (fairness, equality or equity) in that. That said, I do hold hope that there is justice, mercy and grace in the next life and that the atonement of Jesus Christ will heal all unfairness. While I think/believe/hope the latter is true, I don’t necessarily agree that suffering is as a matter of course why we’re here. I concede that we do all die, and that death is a part of the plan.
The thought of “learning to enjoy” our suffering and trials is not appealing. Sort of like what your wife said Watcher, I don’t think we’re supposed to enjoy those things (maybe not for the same reasons she does) and I don’t think I’m capable of enjoying some of my trials. For example, I have not enjoyed my faith crisis and have no desire to find joy in it – it has nevertheless benefitted me in some ways in the long run. My faith crisis has not benefitted the church. Like PanamaManX I am dubious of those comments I hear sometimes at church.
And I do agree with Nibbler. I believe we are all on the same path, yet the path is different for each of us. We are all together yet we are each alone.
This presupposes that there is an “overarching purpose” for morality for us as individuals – which I don’t necessarily buy. What if “mortality” is like when a parent takes their kids to the park because the house is too small for the kids and the parent’s temper to co-exist – and the kids wind up in the sandbox under the parent’s observation (within eye sight)?
Child development experts are really exited about providing mediums for children to experience different things and create different things from them. Brene Brown says (basically) that in order for something to be meaningful (full of meaning), it needs to be transferred from the head to the heart through the hands.
What if the primary purpose of life is to “create”something for us and about usin our corner of the sandbox for as long as we are here? Building upon you sandbox metaphor… I am thinking of the malleability and impermanence of sand.
I am reminded of children building a structure out of blocks and knowing that it will be time to clean up soon and asking me to take a picture of their creation before taking it down. They know that it cannot last, but the picture provides proof that it was here and that they created it.
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