Sir why did you teach me how to count?

[TheLegend]

What's the purpose of life? I read an article and wanted to get your opinions about it.. It was something like this..

 

Everything started by putting the numbers in an order... 0 is a beginning...Then comes 1 then 2,3,4,...goes till infinity...And there's also an other side to this, -1, -2...these go till infinity also...You can't know what happened there..You wake up at 0, crying..Then you learn how to count.. Just when you think you're going to infinity, you fall & close your eyes...

 

There's a saying "Every new day is a new beginning"...Men think about this every day he wakes up...there's morning, there'll be mornings... Going to the bathroom trying not to hit the walls, a fast breakfast, the first cigarette of the day on the way to work, trying to catch the bus, work, tiredness, and then trying to be happy by thinking about the same sentence of the paragraph before going to sleep.. Let me remind you, "Every new day is just a beginning that you know how'll end, that's it." Maybe life goes on easier when you're overly optimistic, but if your plan is not just finishing your life, than you get bored.

 

To make the time pass by, in other words, finishing your life... Sometimes/often you just think how you can quickly finish the day that you called "a new beginning"...And if it's a vacation day....Everything that comes to your mind & everything you can do feels nonsense and you think of the end of it, it's pointless. You sit there and look at the clock...tick tock tick tock...Then again you remember the businessman, writers, friends etc who tell you how valuable time is...You get bored..Is there something I'm missing? why's time so valuable? Then you end up thinking that they're all talking nonsense..Time is not valuable...I got lots of time, take some of my time you time hungry monsters..work 36 hours, build towers, let's see what happens...12 hours is enough for me, I'd sleep 10 hours and read & eat for 2 hours and get back to sleep... Make wars, kill, die, work, steal, love, hate, do what ever you want to do...I know I'm not supposed to be here...I don't know why I got punished like this..

 

And there's the people who are about to die, or elderly people...A couple more days, weeks or months, living is so valuable for them... So now, I'm going to try different ways to make the time pass and then I'll say I wish I had another day to live just when I'm about to die? weird...So is living a preseen life, nicer than dieing?

 

Seems like it is...We're like the kids on the beach who try to build a sand castle...We're gonna build the castle and then sit and tell us how beautiful it looks... And then the waves'll come, or a ball, or someone with huge feet will come and destroy it.. And there's also the people who can't build one, they feel sad. Why are you sad my friend, look, they built one once...look what happened...let me tell you what happened...nothing.

 

Why did you teach me how to count...is it so that I can see how passed I am 0?

 

What do you guys think?

[becallamjr]

Very interesting. I believe life is the pursuit of one's ultimate happiness.

[TheLegend]

Which we know does not exist?

 

lol, why didn't anyone else reply, is it just us, scorpios, that find this interesting or what? heheh

[tyler711]

Interesting article. A little hard for me to read, though, the way it is written. Everyone dies. I may die before the next senior in line does, so I have a sort of Carpe Diem outlook on life. I don't understand how people get caught up in things like work and body image so much. All it takes is a little common sense to stay healthy and manage money. Life is meant to be enjoyed, and I do enjoy it, however I don't gain something for myself by hurting others or breaking any laws. I agree with you that "ultimate" happiness doesn't exist. We will always strive or wish for more than we have.

[WildChild]

Everyone alive in this world has two things in common: We're born and we die.

 

My exhusband's favorite motto is: "You sleep when you're dead." Meaning why waste life sleeping and sitting around.

[TheLegend]

Interesting article. A little hard for me to read, though, the way it is written.

Thats because I found it interesting so I translated the whole thing, lol.

 

I agree with you that "ultimate" happiness doesn't exist. We will always strive or wish for more than we have.

 

We will always find something to be sad about, it looks like that's the human nature.. It sucks maybe, but on the other hand, life would be really boring if we got everything we wanted, and sometimes, it's better if we don't get what we wanted.

[WildChild]

Sheryl Crow sings it best: It's not having what you want, it's wanting what you got

[Alabama]

What language did you translate the article from? I'm curious. Also the tone the fact that our life will be over one day, but counting doesn't neccesarily make it worse. We need counting to survive. We depend on it. And when it is our time to go, then that is that. We lived. Isn't that enough? That we were given the gift of life and allowed to enjoy this world in it's happiness and sadness? I think so.

[Caldus]

But see, how do you know what happens when we die? How do you know that one who dies will merely be doing the equivalent of our notion of sleeping? How do you know death constitutes a blank nothingness? We would like to think that death is something more than that, but to automatically believe that would be merely wishful thinking of course.

 

Then again, death is a death of a consciousness. When there is no consciousness, there is no pain. Only the time before consciousness is about to die out may one feel pain. Ever been knocked out temporarily by a baseball bat? Do you remember anything between the time that bat struck you upside the head and when you're sitting at a hospital bed looking up to the nurse? No. You don't. How can pain be felt when there is no conscious subject to receive that pain? This is not to say that death is a totally liberating thing either. For it is our fate in this life.

 

Or is it? Can we cheat death and find out a way to live forever? Why though? What good is that? Given a thousand years, could one contemplate reality and meaning in life enough that they actually feel like reality and ultimate meaning itself is accessible? That is why some say that figuring out the meaning of life is not even necessary. You can find meaning in your life but you can't find the meaning of life itself. Your consciousness can be fed with meaning. We are our own meaning makers.

 

Something else I've been thinking about lately: so what if we build sand castles our whole lives only to have them diminished? Does that mean that we should never build those castles in the first place? If we never did, then we were not feeding our bank of experiences. Experiences mean something to you. So what if the sum of all our actions in life equals zero? It does not even matter that it is such a temporal thing. Which life is better? Building a sand castle, having it diminished, and then dying. Or sitting on the sidelines and thinking about how absurd it would be to build a sand castle, thereforeeee it is never diminished, and then dying. Both are not very attractive choices I guess. But I would sure as hell pick the first choice, because at least I can still make it mean something to me. And maybe for others as well.

[byates5637]

very interesting. I think about this kind of stuff alot. i wrote a poem about it a few weeks ago...it is in the poetry section and titled "Why?"

 

If the point of life is to find ultimate happiness, and my progress is measured on a number line i must be around -50. For all you fellow math nerds out there.. i could model my happiness as a function of time as a damped sine wave. The highs and lows have already passed and i am left with a jaded, numb feeling.

 

In my youth i was much happier. Life was simple and easy. I didn't need much to be happy. But with age comes corruption and pain. You gain knowledge, and that knowledge lets you see how things really are. It's not a pretty picture.

 

So as for the purpose of life i draw a blank. Could it be our purpose is to simply reproduce and die? But then that brings about another question, what is the point of reproducing if we already know the cylical pattern of existence?

 

Sometimes is seems for me that the purpose of life it to determine the purpose of life.

 

But then again maybe i am just at a bad point in life, and when things get better i will realize the purpose of life is arbitrary as long as we enjoy ourselves.