To wonder what the point of life is?

[overthinker1000]

I think I might be just having a mid life crisis really but wondered if other people think like this. I'm 39.

My life is essentially really good. I have a family who I love, and a stable job that I like. Obviously covid has presented challenges but probably less so than for many other people. I'm not depressed.

I'm just finding myself thinking a lot about the meaning of life... what the point of it all is... I see adverts about 1/2 people getting cancer and I think ok so it's only a matter of time until I or someone I loves gets very ill and dies... it's just a waiting game for things to go wrong really. Add in the climate crisis and covid, it all just seems to be rubbish. I've basically got in my life everything I could want but I'm still restless and questioning the point of each day.

What's wrong with me?! Does everyone go through this at my age?

No, I don't feel like that. The point of life is what you decide it is! And you can change your purpose or find new ones whenever you like, throughout your life. When people lanent the fact that there's no purpose to life, I often think - imagine if there actually were a specific purpose to life, imposed by a deity or by society. What if you failed at it? What if it were a purpose you didn't agree with or want to achieve? Having a universal purpose to life would be awful

@lazylinguist I like that thought process-it had genuinely never occurred to me to think about it like that!

Glad it made sense! I've always been fine about not having a purpose, but it only fairly recently occurred to me to think about the downsides of actually having one! The other downside is that having a set purpose could make you overlook or miss out on all sorts of opportunities or experiences in life that weren't aligned with your purpose.

I really like this idea - imagining the opposite is true. Clever!

I have been feeling a bit better since I posted this thread tbh. I think it has helped me to just see that each day is just a day and that it's ok there isn't a purpose over and above loving loved ones and trying to enjoy yourself essentially. I have always struggled with trying to achieve lots of things and now there's not much to achieve I guess I have to sit back and ride.

Would you be thinking about the meaning of life if you and your family were refugees fleeing conflict in danger for your lives or living in poverty in survival mode?

Why don't you make the best of your insanely good fortune and give something back to society.

I wonder about this but in a slightly different way...I just kind of can't get my head round what the point of humans is and why we are here. We arrive, we do stuff (some people do more important stuff than others obvs), some of us make additional humans, then we die. It's just weird, if I think about it enough it freaks me right out.

The point of life is life

@Pumpkyumpkyumpkin but that is really what happens so anything else is entirely of our own making. Or not! It is a bizarre thought.

A bunch of craddocks.

@Donotgogentle

And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so? I did. And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.

I love this sentiment

☮️

The point, such as there is one, is to try to enjoy what time you have. Don't worry about future generations - worrying about the effect the damage we are doing to the planet will have on people who are not even born yet is nonsensical, literally worrying about a problem that doesn't exist.

Who is to say how long the planet or humanity have got left anyway? We might get struck by an asteroid at any minute. We might get invaded by hostile aliens. It's fairly probably we will be wiped out in the next few decades anyway, once islamists have perfected nuclear terrorism.

I think one of the blokes in Spinal Tap said it best, the point of life is to "have a good time all the time."