The Purpose of Life

Today, I was talking with my philosophy teacher about the purpose of life, and after a while, I realized that there are two schools of thought about this and I made a conclusion. I saw people from all kinds of backgrounds, from kids to billionaires, talking about this subject and considering their purpose because it is so important.

These school of thoughts may or may not be right but don’t try to judge any of them until you see the conclusion because it’s useless to do so from the beginning.

The Myth of Sisyphus

This is the first school of thought promoted by Camus, an existentialist atheist, considering that there are no gods and that we have no purpose.

As far as I can remember the main idea was that Sisyphus got punished by the gods, so he had to do a meaningless job for eternity, and since he was already dead, there was no way for him to escape.

The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. – Albert Camus

We are all Sisyphus including the kid working at McDonald's because he decided to play video games for the first 18 years of his life and he had no backup plan when he finished high school and the multi-millionaire, big shot working on Wall Street.

The idea is that we are all caught up in a routine, in a meaningless job because no one needs McDonald's slaves and even those people working there know it's useless. The sad part is that most of the people are caught up in a cycle that’s going on in their mind, thinking that without a job they will have no money thus they will not be able to pay the expenses they have so they will die out of hunger. But that cannot be further from the truth since there are so many other options like Steem for example.

The idea is that if we realize that what we are doing is meaningless, like working at MC Donald’s is, then we can consciously do that robotic stuff and we maybe even get to amuse of ourselves and how stupid we look.

The absurdity is met when Sisyphus cannot escape his “job” not even through suicide because he is already dead, this being a reflection of our lives and that suicide is not going to free us but consciousness since he became aware of his trivial task.

There are no gods; we have no purpose, our job is meaningless thus we are wasting our existence by doing it so we should become aware of our situation and try to change it, this is what I understood from the whole myth that is actually the myth of the 21-century human being.

Religion

On the other hand, there are the well-known influences of all kinds of religions considering that humans have a purpose because they were created by someone that knows everything.

This belief doesn’t resonate with me; I do not like it because if we already have a purpose, then we are prived from the option of forging our own purpose thus being just some simple marionettes, playing an ironic game that we already know how is going to end up. It’s like programming a computer you already know what the outcome is going to be and what purpose everything in there has.

Also, what I don't like in this situation is that mostly you have to follow some strict rules that will decide where you're going after you die but it seems like a nonsense since life itself is not rigid but fluid, always in change.

Conclusion

One of the theories says that we have no purpose and the possibility to create our own and the other one believes that we already have a set purpose. But what both of these theories miss out of sight is the fact that they are just opinions, interpretations and that we, as humans are metaphorically in a box and we cannot see past that box without transcending it.

Beyond the box we live in is probably all the truth in the world, existence itself and I don’t think that we can get through the box without either dying and regaining direct contact with everything or by transcending it through other methods like meditation.

We are just making assumptions about the truth thus missing the truth itself from our eyes, missing the fact that we do not know anything and that we are only hoping that we are right.

In the end, don’t have total trust in what I’m saying, I don’t know anything either, I’m still caught up in the same box as you are and maybe, one day, I shall be able to surpass my limitations.

The pictures are from Pixabay: 1, 2, 3, 4.