The Purpose Of Life: What leads us towards our True Purpose

Understanding

Have you ever wondered "What is the purpose of life?"

Why such a sudden question you ask? I mean, surely it must've come to your mind. "What am I actually working for? What is my reason to continue living? What is my goal in life?" but the thing is that your goal in life is different than the purpose of your life.

How? You ask.

Your goal in life is nothing but a particular thing that you want to achieve in the future, something that you want to be or something that you want to have.

Your purpose of life is something that you are supposed to do, like for example, let's take a guy named 'John', John's goal in life is that he wants his business to succeed and to grow, he wants to become a millionaire. However, his purpose of life... I don't know. Neither does he.

You must be thinking "This guy is going on and on about the purpose of life, but in the end even he doesn't know. Does he?" And that is absolutely correct. I don't know what the purpose of the person standing in front of me is, I don't even know my purpose, that is, the reason why I still continue to live. I am at the end a mere human being, the meaning of life has changed as time has passed, long ago when the world was still in the warring state, people thought that their purpose of life is to defend their country or territory. It was as easy as that, but the thing is that many people forced it to be their reason to live, when actually they were supposed to serve a different purpose. I am not saying that no one knows their purpose in life. Great scientists, poets, authors, doctors, comedians even people with a small status like cobblers, cleaners, maids, knew their purpose in life. Obviously they didn't know everything about how they are "supposed" to live their lives, they just had a better understanding of themselves.

Human beings are a really different sort of creatures, we can communicate and that too in not just one way like dogs or other animals do, we have different languages, dialects and the power of expressing ourselves in the form of writing.

Why did I suddenly bring that up?

If we are truly different than the other beings obviously our purpose is and will be different, but is that really the case? Our purpose in life could be to just eat, excrete and reproduce. Take lions as an example, a lion eats, breeds and excretes. At least that's what it seems like, but even a lion contributes to nature, ever heard about or read about the Food Chain or Food Web? If we compare our lives to that of a lion, our purpose in life must be very different but what if it isn't? What if our purpose is the same as a lion?

Now here's the thing, we human beings as individuals have different purposes in life and I think that we are the only species where each individual has his/her own purpose of life. I mean have you ever seen a lion act fundamentally different from another lion? No, Panthera Leo as a species has only one purpose, but we as human beings can even manipulate that, we can make a lion to perform tricks on a leash and many humans have the purpose of "manipulating different species to their own profit/good." Still a person doesn't know his/her purpose of life.

In the end it is all about "Understanding", understanding the true purpose of one's life.

Even understanding the purpose of life could be the purpose of life itself.