The Purpose of Life

As I was growing up, I thought of life as a test, even an ordeal. The best way to succeed was to forge ahead, don’t make mistakes, try hard, get through it fast, not turn to the right or the left, and never slow down to enjoy the journey (to stop and smell the roses) because that would waste valuable time. This was a big mistake.

I have since realized that that way of thinking, while it may not waste much time, can be the waste of a perfectly good life. We get one chance at this life and life is SO good, we each need to find the most joy in it that is possible. And so I now believe that the purpose of life is to learn how to live. And I don’t mean just how to stay alive, but how to truly live. It is sort of like the idea of becoming a parent is so you will learn, through your experiences, how to be a parent. Because life is the process of learning how to live, we may make many mistakes along the way. We try things and find they don’t work; we try other things and discover they work well, so we keep them in our lives. We are taught in our families and in our communities; we learn from our circumstances. We watch and learn from the examples of others. And so, over the years, by trial and error, we eventually find our own way, what works best for us, and we learn how to live, and how to be happy. And our life is very good. Some are quick learners, they have it all together (or so it would seem). There are some of us who spend a lifetime learning how to live because the lessons of life need to be taught to us again and again until they finally sink in.
There are really very few things we need to learn in our lives: who we are (and how to become our best selves), how to use our agency (making choices), how to manage the world around us (fulfilling our physical needs), and how to relate with other human beings (how to love and be loved, how to forgive, etc. so as to fill our emotional needs). More on these in the coming days.