2. If you have no destination, then your journey is meaningless

 The meaningless journey-importance of purpose.

 

But to begin with you may want to question why would that person standing in the middle of the road be considered a fool?

Why can’t he decide to enjoy the moment and end it all once he has had enough of his enjoyment of life? Why should he avoid getting run over by a car? You may think there are obvious answers to these questions – that ending life defeats the point of life! However to some they would differ- that life is to do what you wish with it- it’s your life! So you even have the movement for legal euthanasia that campaigns for the right to end your life if you so wish; suicide clinics have even opened in countries where it is legal! These assumptions about life’s objectives and purpose have been questioned philosophically over the ages to form the most basic answers to the question of why we are alive. But why is it important to know why you are alive?

 The most important question in life: Why am I alive?

The fact that you are reading this means that you are alive- the truth of reality is that people do not live forever- they may wish it to be true- they may invest in cryogenics to freeze their bodies in the hope that they may be able to come back to life - but that is all speculation- and as we will discuss below, speculation does not trump reality. The reality is at the moment, that you will die one day and will not come back to life to this world.

 To deny this reality is to deny living correctly-as we will discuss later- because nobody can live in the reality around them and deny its rules. If you chose to ignore those rules of physical reality you would not last very long without suffering. If you chose to ignore the reality of leaving your room through the door and tried to go through the wall you would have a painful existence bleeding and bruising to death. If you feel hungry and chose to ignore the biological reality of your physical body’s nutritional requirements, and denied it the reality of sustenance from food then your body’s cells would not respire and they would die.

Once death is accepted as a reality then we cannot ignore it.  

The importance of purpose in life, can be seen in the parable at the beginning, that car of death coming towards you while you stand in the middle of the road. Death is a reality - we can not ignore the reality if we want to live in it. You can not survive the reality if you do not live according to its rules. Like the one who tries to exit a room through a wall rather than the door. Just like we study the reality of a room to find out how to exit it safely- we must study the reality of death to understand how to navigate it. Even if you did not know yet what happens at the point of death- you should still be concerned with its existence as it is hurtling towards you like that car! What is death about and what happens after it? These are the realities around death that you should be asking. Death is the end of life and so is connected to our lives. This connection is important because it means that the importance of purpose of life ,is that it is connected to the preparation for death. The purpose of life will depend upon your understanding of what happens to you when you die. So for example, if someone believes that after death they will be judged by God for their admittance into a Paradise or Hell based upon the sins that they have committed and the good that they have done then they may be more observant of the sins in life and choose to live a life of serving and pleasing their God. On the other hand if a person did not think that there were to be any accountability and nothing happens after death- you just materially decompose into the soil, then that person may choose a purpose in life that he felt made him happy- not concerned with a purpose of pleasing God who will judge him.

 

This understanding then has an effect on our actions, as it will define for us what is good and bad- which will be defined by whether it helps in attaining our objective of life. So the second reason for the importance of purpose is that it will define what we consider to be moral. Good and evil are not intrinsic within an action and are not labelled on any action and there are no universal moral codes that everyone is born with. Societies have their own penal codes different to one another as they have different views of morality. People have their different views on what is moral too- for example some people would think it is immoral to kill an animal in order to eat it and therefore become vegetarian. Some people would think it is immoral to also exploit animals and become vegan.

Good and evil are linked to one's moral criteria which is linked to their objective in life. So for instance a person who believes that they are alive to obey God and earn His salvation may have a view of abortion as a sin due to the sacredness of a God-given life. This may be different to one who believes that they are alive to enjoy their freedoms that the past generations have given to this ever-evolving world and that they should be free to abort the life of a baby in their body if they so wish. 

 Some people may argue on the contrary that there are universal moral truths -for example that everyone can agree that it would be wrong to kill a child. However, these can be argued to be instinctual responses that go against our instinct to continue our species. This is a natural response similar to how we universally would feel fearful if facing a threat- the physiological fight or flight response. However these instinctual responses linked to life are limited and do not comprehensively cover the more specific choices in everyday life. For instance, we see differences across people and cultures in the view of whether murderers should have their lives taken for the life they took even though the taking of life goes against our instinctive inclination to preserve our fellow human and continue our species.

 

 

Finally,your purpose in life will define what to expend your life force upon- it will drive you in your darkest hour- it will push you to keep on – to do what you are supposed to do- it will give you purpose – it will let you know if you are wasting your life or fulfilling it. It can cause you to find happiness or anxiety when facing obstacles in your path of life. As an example if you think that your purpose is to enjoy yourself, then anything which disrupts that like the death of a loved one whom you used to enjoy life with, or imprisonment where your liberties are taken away can be the source and cause of misery and depression preventing you from engaging with the world. These unfortunate events may be viewed differently by someone whose purpose is not to live for enjoying this life but sees it as serving God in order to enjoy the afterlife. This person may see the unexpected death of a loved one as part of God’s plan and his imprisonment as an opportunity to spread God’s message inside prison- remaining happy knowing that he is fulfilling his purpose!

In short if your purpose of life is wrong then your life would have been wasted and worthless.

This is similar to the one who buys the latest most expensive smartphone but does not use its functions correctly because he hasn’t figured out how to use it. In fact the owner uses it as a paperweight to stop the papers on his desk from flying off! or he uses it as a door stop to prop a door open! Its purpose hasn’t been realised. This was not the purpose of the phone- to be used as a paperweight or a doorstop. It was a waste of his phone.