There are plenty of studies that show that having a "purpose" and working after it is correlated with higher happiness or well being. "Purpose" is vague enough, so to make things worse I am going to conflate it with "life meaning", "calling" or "personal values". I recently came across the Japanese "Ikigai" which seems related.
Ok, I buy this, however, what is this "purpose/ meaning/ calling/ value" thing? What does it mean, really? How do I find mine?
I think this is the kind of thing a fair amount of people here in HN have thought about, so I thought of asking.
Is there any research that goes into what is "purpose" and how to figure it out? I've come across plenty that talks about how good it is, but nothing that goes into how to find it. Any serious books that you may recommend?
Purpose/calling is meaningless IMHO. I opted for "pushing my comfort zone". Something I learned from a woman I was dating when I was 20 (she was 9 years older and entering the Peace Corp). Now rapidly reaching the other side of 50, I seek to be content and without dissonance in my day-to-day life. I have routines I enjoy, no bucket list, and time to let my mind wander to whatever tickles my fancy.
Instead, expand your horizons as much as possible. Read. Study. Try new things. They don't have to be expensive things, this isn't about privilege. Anyone can try drawing, or writing music, or reading philosphy, or long distance running, or volunteering, or sexual experimentation, ... things that push your comfort zone and force you to see the world a new way. If you have the means, travel to foreign countries and get lost, skydive, surf, scuba dive, play in a band, take a dance class, take any class at a college that seems interesting, take a Toastmasters class and give speeches, change jobs.
The more you bend yourself (without breaking) the more you will learn about what gives your life contour.
You might never find purpose, but hopefully you will find peace and delivery from the restlessness you have expressed.
Consider that perhaps you don't find your "calling." Instead, it finds you.
The only "trick" here is that you have to be reachable by putting yourself out there, and keeping in mind that you're fishing, not hunting. Coming back empty-handed is not a sign of failure, it's one round in a process of elimination.
Volunteer work is a good start, missionary work is even better. Or pick up a holiday shift in retail or a temp job. Help out at homeless outreach, animal control and domestic violence centers. Attend a service at a church, a temple and a mosque. Go on a ride-along with the local cops. Visit your national parks and memorials.
Most of this is an exercise in forced association with people and situations you'd otherwise overlook-- you'll hang out with the poor, the wealthy, the criminal, the pious, and everything in-between enough to at least get a sense for the breadth of the struggles of the human condition-- and present you with a buffet of experiences broad enough to encounter a perspective that resonates with you.
My pet theory is that triumph over struggle is the real driver of happiness and the only universal purpose any of us have. Once people transcend the struggle, there is nothing left for them to overcome, and they never again feel any sense of satisfaction.
ESID, and not everyone is meant for servitude, but it works for me. Best of luck to you.
As I type this, I am aware it sounds bonkers. But when you pay close attention to what accomplished, creative people say when they talk about their life's work, you notice it all sounds so very, very similar.
They could be in science or art or sports or music or politics or really anything, and they'd point to some foundational behavior or event at a young age. And then they'll also talk about not WHY they love the thing they're doing, but rather how they just SEEMED TO DO the thing they're doing, and they kinda decided they may as well do more of it, or do it properly.
It's not about a big reveal. Rather, it's like a tiny voice, and the more attentively you listen, the clearer it becomes.
What is important to you, what do you care about? Who depends on you for what? What skills, abilities, connections, positions, etc. do you have that can be useful in the world?
I think too often people want some grand overall narrative about making a big impact on the world, which, if you adopt it without really truly believing and caring about it, will be actually demotivating. For the most part, anyone can find purpose by doing a better job at what they are already doing in life. Be a better whatever you are. Go deeply into it, and put more energy into it.
I also highly recommend these books:
* Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
* The Enchiridion by Epictetus
* Meditations by Marcus AureliusI think you should just explore religion (esp. Zen, Dzogchen, Mahamudra, Advaita), philosophy, literature, and yourself through first person experience until you intuitively feel the error of this entire mode of thought. It won't do to tell yourself that, although reaching the conclusion analytically makes for a first step. You have "meaning" and "purpose" sapping assumptions built into you, like modern materialist reductionism. Reductionism says that a thing amounts to the sum of its parts, but it's obviously fallacious. Try cutting a cat in half and putting the two parts back together and seeing if you have what you started with. Reductionism is a powerful mode of thought in certain circumstances, but it's not absolutely true.
I think we need to acknowledge what there is outside of ourselves, and recognize that the universal is always and only found in the the particular. Every blade of grass is alive with meaning, but it doesn't speak it in terms of utility and materialist reductionism.
You also used the word "value", which I think is more on point.
We all have a different set of values. If you do things that are in conflict with those values, you will feel bad. So finding a job where the most important values you have are fulfilled is a key point to being happy.
I don't have any particular resource, but I think there must be a lot of books on how to find and understand those values. I personnally worked on that with a therapist.
My example :
I was working in a 45k-employee engineering service company (not sure of the english translation), where I was working on an ERP software for (military) aviation. The tech stack and the human organization was terrible.
It conflicted with some of my values (knowledge, peace, creativity, autonomy...) and was starting to make me feel anxious and angry. I also felt that what I did had no real purpose.
I knew I needed a place where kindness and knowledge were important. When I finally found that, working in a place were I feel the end product makes the world better, my life really was better.
- what you enjoy doing
- what you are good at doing
- what you can get paid for doing
Imagine a a circle for each of those categiries as a Venn diagram - the middle of the 3 would be "Ikigai."
Try making a list of all three, then see if there is overlap.
I'd probably start with some marine biology classes. Then maybe you could find an internship or job at a large aquarium. After that you'd need to forge relationships with handlers and suppliers. Start reaching out and asking "hypothetical questions" about sourcing "for the aquarium" ;)
While you're trying to make the deal you'll need to setup a space for your new friend. You'll probably need a source for fish in bulk and maybe a free water source. Municipal water would be expensive.
Good luck!
1. Depression and similar type of disorders. You seek for some “purpose” as a magic pill that will suddenly make your troubles go away.
2. Fear of taking responsibility for your own life and decisions. Sort of a passive infantile position when you subconsciously hope that Santa Claus will finally give you some ultimate gift that will make all major decisions for you and will give you some magical motivation, guidance and answers to major questions out of nothing.
3. Form of addiction when all the usual stimulations like social media, porn, eating, smoking, alcohol etc. are not enough anymore to give you high, but your wise mind blocks you from switching to heavy drugs and masks this as a socially acceptable and even encouraged noble “search for meaning”.
All this doesn’t mean there is no purpose or it cant be found.
But my personal observations suggest, that once you’re out of the games you play with yourself and healthy enough physically — you don’t need a dedicated process for that, it comes more or less naturally.
And usually in a very unique way that can hardly be extrapolated to other people. Despite the opposite view of all those fancy bestsellers that not worth the paper they printed on.
This is the reason you haven’t found yet and ’ll never do any certain final answer, but just tons and tons of materials circling around and never hitting the target.
The best you can count on is to find someone who’s life, values, circumstances, personality are close enough to yours so you get some spark pushing you to your own answers.
Genesis 1:28 is your purpose; "Be fruitful and multiply"
It's best to implement that with another person who shares your purpose and helps enable the objects of your purpose to implement theirs.
Everything else you do are trade-offs to making the implementation of your purpose as enjoyable as possible for you and your partner.
Starting a family is definitely the safest bet, probably long term too because these ideologies tend to lose their appeal over time.
But hey, I don't even seek happiness myself. I'd be glad to just know WTF all this was about before I die. Being some 10^28 particles out of 10^80 particles in a weird universe which doesn't seem to have any obvious purpose on one hand, and yet we're in this specific one and not in any other.
On the one hand it's so mind bogging huge and yet on large scale everything is pretty predictable, and the only interesting calculation as far as we can see in universe is actually right here. Humanity could explode into the Galaxy or it could die silently and predicting it is harder than the most complex physics of any known star.
So, if someone is trying to kill you, survive. If they aren't (and I hope that is the case!), try to find ways to help humanity survive in a universe that, if nothing is done, will kill all of us and our descendants sooner rather than later.
Now, assuming that we figure it out, and spread life beyond Earth in a sustainable way (which includes making Earth life sustainable), our descendants can address the question of purpose more fully. But until then, our only reasonable purpose is to give them the chance to ask.
His thoughts on "finding your passion" are that most people don’t have a clear passion to follow, and that we don’t have evidence having a job based on an interest makes you more likely to find that work satisfying. He believes that is better to master valuable niche skills and then use them as leverage to steer your work to directions that resonate with you.
He also has develop a framework for life called Deep Life where he separates the Deep Life into 4 areas: Community (family, friends, etc.), Craft (work and quality leisure), Constitution (health), and Contemplation (matters of the soul).
"To me, the deep life is about focusing with energetic intention on things that really matter — in work, at home, and in your soul — and not wasting too much attention on things that don’t". – Cal Newport
I leave you some links:
Book "So Good They Can't Ignore You" https://www.calnewport.com/books/so-good/
On Passion and Its Discontents https://www.calnewport.com/blog/2018/06/30/on-passion-and-it...
The Deep Life: Some Notes https://www.calnewport.com/blog/2020/03/17/the-deep-life-som...
But the one belief I've come to is that we do ourselves a disservice when we fall pray to the idea that the universe has some purpose for us. In reality, we are just animals like the all the rest, just more intelligent. We don't believe that there is some grand purpose behind the squirrels you see in your yard, and it is hard to imagine they put much thought into it either.
Instead, if we look at our lives as just one thread of existence among all the others, it takes a lot of the pressure off of us having to live some preordained path. Instead, we can choose our own path and follow wherever our interests and experiences bring us.
Of course, being biological creatures, there is always our internal "purpose" of continuing the human race. Whether that is through having kids, ensuring our environment isn't going to be uninhabitable in a few generations, or the propagation of our species beyond our planet, there are things we can all do towards this end (with wildly differing degrees of challenge admittedly). But these are the purposes we all share to some degree.
But beyond that, your life is yours to live as you wish. Find the things that you are drawn to and where spending hours on it feels effortless and you'll be on your way to a good life.
I think the big temptation that many of us face, in big part due to our environments, is the belief that we need to become wealthy to live a good and purposeful life. In some cases the purpose you decide upon will naturally, and conveniently, lead towards the acquisition of wealth. But for most it will not. And pursuing wealth when you could be pursuing the things you actually want to spend your time (your most valuable resource) on is often a mistake.
For example, in this discussion, currently the most upvoted answer says that your purpose must be a source of income. Well, not really. Some people have a day job to keep their bills, and write poetry at night, and they consider the poetry to be their purpose. Of course, it is awesome if your purpose can also become a source of income (because then you can spend more time doing it), but do not put the cart before the horse. First find out what your purpose is, only then start thinking about making money from it.
Similarly, "what you are good at doing" is a nice thing, but that often comes with practice. Do not give up on trying new things.
Try different things. Afterwards, notice the emotions connected with your memories of doing those things. Explore around the things that felt good; try doing something similar but different.
I found them useful, myself.
Derek's "Don't Be A Donkey" post is also applicable here: https://sive.rs/donkey
Have you considered that the question may be a trap and/or pointless to begin with?
First, listen to affinity effects, but listen critically.
What I mean is: if you find that you just so happen to get along really great with haberdashers, you find yourself at haberdashery conventions, and you have an ample collection of hats: take note of this! *But let this be one factor among others.* Some of the most important, purposeful years of my life came from people and contexts I didn't think I related to at all.
Next, get yourself a bunch of free time and a space to experiment in.
Try out stuff you're curious about! For me, it was textile design, music, and calligraphy. I'm terrible at all of these things, but I never would have figured out what I do want to do, which is design & build user interfaces.
And when I do, I think a lot about how tailors make garments that feel so good and right and true, but still look amazing. This metaphor informs and enriches my software practice.
The key ingredients are time, money, safety, and space.
You need time -- no one can experiment if they have only an hour or two of freedom per day.
You need money -- no one can experiment without making purchases.
You need safety -- it has to be safe to experiment. No one innovates when the consequences of failure are homelessness and death.
And finally, you need physical space to house whatever equipment and resources you need for your explorations.
I wouldn't even consider debating this with anyone. It's too true.
>"Purpose" is vague enough, so to make things worse I am going to conflate it with "life meaning", "calling" or "personal values".
What is the purpose of the yeast which makes bread? It is life, it has a purpose. What is the purpose of a grape vine? It is life and has a purpose.
Purpose is vague because it technically has to be simple because it's true of single celled organisms as well.
>I recently came across the Japanese "Ikigai" which seems related.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LE5bel_GvU
Only place I've ever seen the word. Possibly the same video you found?
>Ok, I buy this, however, what is this "purpose/ meaning/ calling/ value" thing? What does it mean, really? How do I find mine?
Another great video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-STKInWhpU
When you wake up in the morning. You could stay in bed and stay warm, but instead you jump out of bed and get dressed. You then move onto another task and another task. Imagine you're fulfilling missions. Even if they are small side missions, there is a reward in each mission. Making your bed, cleaning the garbage off the ground. Each thing does have a reward.
There will be a side mission sometime in the day which when you actually do it, it becomes your purpose. It's going to be something you would never have done. Perhaps you're in the grocery store and some old lady is struggling to grab something. You grab it for them, and its wierd, you never do this. You didnt expect anything in return but you did get a reward. Not from the lady, but you did receive a reward.
I can't say I know I've found mine but I have from a young age enjoyed understanding and making machinery, now extended to software. I try to improve and apply my ability at a company that doesn't suck and share anything useful I've learned. I still greatly enjoy learning and applying new knowledge in this area.
Conversely every now and then, I wonder if I wouldn't have more appreciated following an artistic path, say off the top of my head like Aphex Twin (without the fame & success). Probably some of both makes sense. The most important thing is probably not to get caught up not doing anything. You rarely know it's "the thing" while you're doing it, only in retrospect might you realize it was.
Caveat: enjoying (1) is optional if (2) is significant enough and you can endure. :-)
Settled into just enjoying my life and building for the future. Work out, have a dog, have a partner, build cool things. No more existential dread about purpose.
Some are lucky to find it quickly, others it takes awhile.
For me it has shifted as I’ve grown.
In my past I’ve been: A Christian preacher A Navy submarine sailor A wedding DJ A cyber security guy for the feds A software engineer
I’ve been lucky to find fulfillment in my work, my mission. Other ways I’ve found is to give back in some way. For example I use my technical talents to help secure police and 911 systems for my state as a volunteer, others help at shelters or with disaster relief. Others still are big brothers and big sisters. Some find it in religion.
It’s hard to feel unfulfilled when you’re making the world a better place. It’s a good place to start.
Take the scenic route through life, give freely of yourself to others, in this you will find peace.
Re: ikigai, I hate this concept, though I'm unlucky enough that the things I love either 1) don't pay enough economically (unless you're stupidly lucky) or 2) you can get paid for it, but it will corrupt it and you'll have a hard time loving it any more. I think the best thing most of us can do is to find something you won't kill yourself doing and make money until you can buy your freedom (some might call that retirement). Maybe it'll be possible to do something truly meaningful afterwards.
There may be many things you like or think have some value or that more of it should exist in the world. But maybe expecting one of those things to grab you in a cone of ethereal light is expecting too much. Perhaps the point is that you can choose and you should.
Go read Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl.
You cannot read a book and find your calling, though it may give you ideas about interesting things to try.
... and this my friend is how the best form of literature known to man kind was born! Out of despair. Because for them, there was no paradise, only Hades. Jesus wasn't around and they didn't believe life after death was something worth bothering with, it was dark, cold and muddy!
> Is there any research that goes into what is "purpose" and how to figure it out
Is there some sort of research that can prove with certainty that you're in love?
Logic was invented long time ago to solve a communication problem. The most powerful expression of logic is mathematics. But purpose is beyond logic's scope. Mathematics can tell you how to get from pointA to pointB, can't tell you _why_ you have to go from pointA to pointB.
The fact you're even asking this questions is commendable. Most ppl are not as courageous. However, no one can do the work for you, you have to figure that for yourself.
You can't force something to be your "why", it has to be natural, so if you haven't found it yet just keep exploring and enjoying the journey.
The older I get the more I find acceptance plays a role in all of this. At some point you may have make the choice to accept what you have and what you don't, embrace it, and let yourself be happy putting your all into that little universe. This doesn't have to conflict with having goals/dreams either!
Introspection through meditation can be helpful for this sort of stuff too.
I quit my previous job at another $BIGTECH company due to similar problem where people didn't want to work.
Is this a new thing since pandemic that people don't want to do real work? Or it was always like that.
I was a consultant for the last 15 years before becoming a full time bigtech employee a few years ago. I didn't have visibility into inner workings of tech companies.
I think I should do something of my own. But don't know what it should be.
A couple of my previous comments are relevant here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32920232 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32920420
The following two books helped me wrestle with this problem;
* The Sea-Wolf by Jack London - Some relevant excerpts can be found here: https://old.reddit.com/r/books/comments/1jqpar/what_book_sin...
* Philosophy in a Meaningless Life: A System of Nihilism, Consciousness and Reality by James Tartaglia - You can download a free copy from here: https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/book/philosophy-in-a-m...
One should search for meaning and happiness will come as a by product. This is better than being hedonistic and searching for happiness.
There are 2 meanings implicit and third one you can persue. 1) Search for meaning is meaningful itself.
2) Human life has intrinsic meaning. I dont agree with nihilism that life has no meaning. Life has no 'given' meaning - correct. But since we are conscious, there is a living being going through experiences, there is intrinsic meanining to human life. Consciousness gives meaning to everything. In absense of consciouness, nothing has meaning. This intrinsic meaning is irrespective of life success. Even for a complete failure, since a real living being went through this life, the life still has meanining.
3) External meaning. This is related to success happiness relationships helping others etc. This is a bit fragile, since if you lose these things then you lose meaning. And if you are not successful, life might feel meaningless.
A healthy life is a balance of persuing external meaning and accepting and giving value to internal meaning.
note - This way of thinking is not happiness vs meaning. happiness is one of the things that gives meaning to human life.
Of course, the answer is, you have no "purpose", or you can have any "purpose" you choose.
Since "purpose" is a completely fictional concept, in the exact same way as finance. You take all the people away, there is no "purpose" to the universe.
Gravity, electromagentism, they're totally happy chugging along with no humans in sight.
But "purpose" evaporates as soon as you get rid of all the monkeys.
This "increase in happiness" you're talking about is just how monkeys think of themselves.
So, you can dive into the rabbit hole of that deep and dark world between your ears, or, you can face reality. OK, who's really going to do that? Not too many people, that's for sure.
I mean come on, you're awesome at Mario Cart right? Who wants to give the major successes in their lives only to face the fact that all of that stuff is bullshit?
So, slink off into the recesses of your neurotic primate consciousness and forget all about ever hearing about this thing called the "real world".
Just ask yourself, who's better off: someone who wrote a 900 page tome on human history, or someone who just wrote a "popular" novel?
Reality is not for the weak... There is no "purpose" except what you invent for yourself...
The best explanation in what I’ve read is, purpose is “living the truest expression of yourself as a human being” - Oprah
To get there I recommend her book, “The Path Made Clear.” Go through it slowly. Your path will unfold in parallel.
I’m working on living authentically (saying what I need to say in the moment not thinking of it after the fact) which is needed to find and live your purpose.
Tactically, at its core, the first level is getting your basic needs met. Beyond that, it’s figuring out who you want to serve and how to use the gifts of your personality to serve them in a way that’s fulfilling to you.
In my year off I took many courses and read many books. 100DaysOfNoCode.com, 30 podcasts in 30 days, Pencil Pirates, Hassan Osman’s course creation course, Decafquest’s philosophy course. I recommend following your curiosity and taking courses that pique your interests. Through this I discovered I could draw. It’s been therapeutic and useful in many ways.
I’ve found my purpose, now I’ve got to figure out how to make a living off it. My purpose unfolded organically. I tried to ignore it because I couldn’t figure out how to make a living off it, but it kept coming up. It brings joy to myself and others. It’s something I couldn’t have figured out by following someone else’s path.
My purpose is to help people get unstuck. I can do it in 15 minutes with only 3 questions. The framework I developed evolved organically. There are 6 categories of questions to help people get unstuck. People love the sessions. Seeing them start with concern or uncertainty and end with relief and confidence is the most rewarding experience for me.
I wish you all the best on your journey
And in that endeavor, you will find your unique purpose. That is, what talents, passions, and resources you have that best enable you to live a life of service and love to those around you.
Regardless of circumstance there is _always_ something we can do for one another.
Full disclosure: I am a Christian and that greatly informs my values and worldview.
If you don't know what your purpose is, try different things - art, making money, helping people, socializing, etc. Figure out low cost ways you can try new stuff. When you start to enjoy an area invest more in that area. When you start to imagine possible plans, increase your focus.
Do I derive some sort of great spiritual meaning from working on side-projects, reading lots of books, playing tabletop RPGs, and planning to get a dog some day? No. But those things bring me satisfaction and happiness, and that's all that is necessary.
Purpose, meaning, and cosmic significance is overrated. This life is all we have: there's nothing after it. Just do what makes you happy.
I think your purpose is to overcome evil. Most of the evil that we have the ability to overcome is internal and if everyone did that the world would be a much better place.
In reading The Gulag Archipelago there is a part where the author has spent chapter after chapter describing the horrible conditions of the prison he is. It seems like a horrible place. A place where there can be no meaning, no hope for those inside it. Then he says this:
“Bless you, prison!”
I . . . have served enough time there.
I nourished my soul there, and I say without hesitation: “Bless you, prison, for having been in my life!
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justin-taylor/aleks...
You see he realized that prison had given him the humility to see the flaws in his own character and to deal with those flaws. He felt much better off having been through that and transformed by it.
Many of us try to find meaning in things that inspire us or make us feel good. But if we find meaning in the the things that transform us into something better we can find joy in even the most horrible circumstances. We can truly become someone better.
We can easily wallow in a sea of possibility and never commit to anything, because whatever you commit to is at the expense of other things you could have done.
So we sit there considering and reconsidering the possibilities and looking for new ones. The implicit hope is that one will show up that is so much brighter than the rest that it’ll absolve us from the burden of commitment.
That’s a mirage. Decide what you want to be and commit to it.
1. "You don't find a purpose, you choose it" ~ anonymous
2. Please read the book "Be so good they can't ignore you" by Cal Newport. The world has bombarded us with the 'work on what you are passionate about and you'll never work a day' idea. They don't tell us what 'passion' is and how to 'develop' it. One should start to focus on their only/various interests. These slight interests are either innate or are a product of their environment. Either way, one should try to spend some time on them, get better. Then after reaching a certain skill level by incremental improvement and incremental +ve feedback, this interest will convert into a 'passion'.
---------------------------
MEANING:
1. Wacth Jordan Peterson's "Meaning of life" lecture on youtube.
2. To find meaning in your life (*existential crisis), all you need to do is consistently pick up any load/responsibility in life - raising kids, managing a team/company, volunteer work, open-source software etc. This will help you see yourself as a useful entity in your own eyes.
Human purpose is ultimately rooted in human nature and its ends. We often seem to think that either purpose is something arbitrary in relation to us or that there is some secret purpose within us that we must discover. Both fall into extremes because on the one hand, human nature determines what is valuable activity, and on the other hand, the concrete ends we engage in are various and open ended, even though they are determinations of what holds generally. Happiness is ultimately rooted in the fulfillment of human nature and its end(s), and (we cannot attain perfect fulfillment in this life), at the very least, avoiding doing things which are directly opposed to our natures.
So I would begin by trying to understand human beings by way of natural law. You'll see virtue come up in this context. The virtues are like a ladder of habits (in the sense of habitus) that lead to happiness.
Given that, I think the grand question of "finding" your purpose starts to look a bit uninteresting. Certainly, we might say some people perceive a calling, but I would be very careful not to construe this in emotional terms. All the pop culture talk about "following your passions" is absolutely disastrous. You don't follow your passions, you follow reason. This is not to say the two must be in opposition, only that the passions are often treated with an absurd reverence, as if they were some great source of hidden wisdom or "true identity".
So I wouldn't worry so much about "finding" this grand purpose of yours. If you live virtuously, you will know how to respond to the world.
Why do you see having purpose in particular as your vehicle to obtain happiness and well being? Answering that question (for yourself) may give you some clues as to the direction your life should take.
Dull work with lots of lulls, or lots of passive consumption, or too little social contact won't usually equate to a sense of meaning. And real-world impact of your work won't really matter here, because that is just an abstraction. If you find "flow" in work, you'll feel what people peg as sense of meaning. You might also from receiving gratitude in-person for your help - it feels good. We're social beings. If you've ever tried the self-shaming route of rationalizing that you "ought" to be content with your lot, you'll know from experience that does not stick. That is not how our monkey brains work. If something feels bad, that's symptomatic.
At some point I came across this exercise for getting to core values which involves figuring out your "origin story". The idea is that you don't choose your values but that you recognize them. It involves reflecting back on some of your earliest, most salient memories, especially as a child. What can you learn from those memories and how have they shaped who you are today?
For me I looked back and remembered some core memories that reminded me that I've always wanted to be a helper. Somewhere along the way I became jaded and lost touch with it. Today I hold just two values as primary: Connection and Compassion. I see my purpose as to live into these as fully as I can.
(I don't remember where I found the exercise but if you search "origin story values exercise" you'll find a few variations)
We are religious being. Our religion is what connect us together and what made our society possible.
Disconnecting of religious leave us aimless, meaningless. You become materialist, nihilist.
Some will chase money or success and will keep them going for a while, but that’s not a good goal. You might reach your FU money and then realise that after a while you are still aimless and fun isn’t fun anymore.
So my atheist understanding of our ’God’ is that our goal should always be truth and love.
Aim toward the best thing you can toward truth and love and see where it lead. Money can be useful, is needed to move forward but it’s not the goal in itself. The same is true of compassion, it sound good and is important, but can never take the place of truth (the current social justice propaganda is a good example)
These things are called "false idols" thing we chase to our own detriment.
Your purpose is thus to orient yourself toward the highest goal of truth and love you can imagine at the moment. Say your truth even if it cost you your job (without being stupid), that should be a adventure in itself.
Maybe your purpose today will be to help someone you know, or to clean something, or to make the best software for someone, or to make someone smile with a good joke on a rainy day. Or it come become a big plan to start a company, etc.
It’s not one thing or a material thing, it’s the alignment of your being toward truth and love as long as possible, as often as possible. It’s a never ending journey, you can always be a bit better tomorrow.
Pray, ask the questions you have in your mind. Listen to the answer that come and see where it lead you. rince, repeat. Start reading the bible (it surprised me how good it is)
It's already made plain how to live, what to do, what the most high is looking for in men and women.
It’s quite simple: Do what is fair and just to your neighbor, be compassionate and loyal in your love, And don’t take yourself too seriously.
But don't get too in your head about comparing your work to others:
I want you to think about how all this makes you more significant, not less. A body isn’t just a single part blown up into something huge. It’s all the different-but-similar parts arranged and functioning together. If Foot said, “I’m not elegant like Hand, embellished with rings; I guess I don’t belong to this body,” would that make it so? If Ear said, “I’m not beautiful like Eye, transparent and expressive; I don’t deserve a place on the head,” would you want to remove it from the body? If the body was all eye, how could it hear? If all ear, how could it smell?
Try to build, not tear down. And whatever gets in the way of the work, is the work.
And at this point I felt the truth burning within me like a sharp flame, that there was some role for everybody but it was not one which he himself could choose, re-cast and regulate to his own liking. One had no right to want new gods, no right at all to want to give the world anything of that sort! There was but one duty for a grown man; it was to seek the way to himself, to become resolute within, to grope his way forward wherever that might lead him. The discovery shook me profoundly; it was the fruit of this experience. I had often toyed with pictures of the future, dreamed of roles which might be assigned to me --- as a poet, maybe, or prophet or painter or kindred vocation.
All that was futile. I was not there to write poetry, to preach or paint; neither I nor any other man was there for that purpose. They were only incidental things. There was only one true vocation for everybody - to find the way to himself.
He might end as poet, lunatic, prophet or criminal - that was not his affair; ultimately it was of no account. His affair was to discover his own destiny, not something of his own choosing, and live it out wholly and resolutely within himself.
Anything else was merely a half life, an attempt at evasion, an escape into the ideals of the masses, complacency and fear of his inner soul. The new picture rose before me, sacred and awe-inspiring, a hundred times glimpsed, possibly often expressed and now experienced for the first time.
I was an experiment on the part of nature, a 'throw' into the unknown, perhaps for some new purpose, perhaps for nothing and my only vocation was to allow this 'throw' to work itself out in my inner most being, feel its will within me and make it wholly mine. That or nothing!
If you can at least mentally strip away the comforts of your life, what will you do to survive, assuming you want to succeed (on your terms, not the world's) at something that gets you up in the morning? You'll probably begin to ask yourself what am I good at, what do I want to learn, how can I learn it? Reality is a constraint, and you have to figure that out.
This may not work for people in certain mental states or stages in life, but I hope this helps.
You need to be responsible for something. A dog. A kid. A dying mom. A goldfish. Without that yes, life just moves along with no purpose.
I have always listened to a LOT of music. One lyric caught my attention when I was in college... "I crucified my hate and held the world within my hand." I thought about that lyric deeply and why it was there. That led to an experiment where I decided not to use the word "hate" for a year. It was hard at first, but as time went by I found that looking for other ways to express issues was transforming my thinking - language can be quite powerful that way.
After that year, I decided to continue not to use that word towards living beings. I might use it towards their actions, but not towards them. With reflection, I realized that a corollary was to use love as a motivation in everything I do - to try hard to find some amount of love for everyone I interact with. It made a lot of my life, especially in hard times, make more sense.
Now it's ~35 years since the initial experiment and I'm retired. I continue to mentor a number of people that I worked with, and others that they now work with (for pleasure, I don't take money). And when things like the current tech layoffs happen, many of them and others come to me for support and contextualization. Only now do I realize that this focus on love has been my purpose for nearly my entire adult life. These people see it (probably intuitively rather than explicitly) and come to me when they struggle to find productive ways to think about hard things in life.
Looking back, it defined me as a leader toward the end of my career. As I was retiring, a manager that I had advocated for thanked me for "leading the org from a place of love". I had avoided using the word "love" in that context for fear of misunderstanding, replacing it with components of love like caring / compassion / supporting / understanding / nurturing etc., but it was always an underlying motivation. It was wonderful that she could see the root of it all. And it was funny that I didn't realize it was my calling until later.
If this makes sense to you, you can explore Visa's writing. I used to neglect taste and aesthetics. I get that you're asking for purpose. But those are related. In order to find your purpose, you must know what you value, and what you like. Visa has an angle on taste that works for me.
https://mobile.twitter.com/visakanv/status/13309873667150643...
There are fun, well-designs versions on Amazon, but you can always just print or write your own cards for the activity. https://casaa.unm.edu/inst/Personal%20Values%20Card%20Sort.p...
Most of the values sound good on paper, so it is helpful to set a limit to force you to prioritize.
Thankfully there are great resources that can help; my top recommendation is 80,000 Hours - named after the roughly 80,000 hours that one will spend in their lives working. Given how much time that is, it's worth doing something good with it.
Following your passion may not be the best way to go - https://80000hours.org/articles/dont-follow-your-passion/
This is a poor model.
Viktor Frankl's man's search for meaning said that purpose is to live life as if every moment had purpose. At first I found that tautological and meaningless. Running on empty is a book that addresses this topic that I found very relevant and clarifying. It is a book about childhood emotional neglect. Effectively your parents probably didn't recognize your emotions and teach you how to handle them, they might not have seen you. This can result in extreme emotional repression, complete inability to manage yourself, counter dependence (being extremely against depending on anyone for anything), the feeling that if someone knew you they wouldn't like you, and a host of other problems. When you have blunted emotions, life feels empty. This emptiness is then interpreted as lack of purpose.
So you are asking a question that protects your ego. "Finding meaning" is the ego protecting version of "feeling less empty." Feeling empty is the result of blunted emotions. Blunted emotions are a result of lessons you didn't learn during childhood (that your parents might not have learned either).
This brings us back to Viktor Frankl's living every moment as if it had purpose. Living every moment as if it has purpose is equivalent to ensuring every moment is not empty which is equivalent to living a life for which the time you spend results in feeling. If you aren't consciously aware of your feelings (if your EQ is not high) or you are not able to manipulate them, it makes it really hard to understand what it means to be in search of feeling which makes it hard to grok what these "normal" people are trying to communicate when they say something like "live every moment as if it has purpose."
Feeling is purpose. Lack of purpose is lack of feelings -> lack of feelings is lack of purpose.
So what makes you feel?
This is solidly in the territory of a therapy level problem because if your emotions are blunted there is something you don't know you don't know because there is a host of things missing from your childhood. There are things that didn't happen as opposed to things that happened that were bad.
Running on empty was a pretty good book. It is worth a read to see if it resonates with you.
If you think you can do it better to solve a problem than what you have found, then you have discovered a possible purpose.
If you still struggle, maybe read Dice Man, a book about contrived purpose.
You don't. Nobody has a purpose. Life is only what you make it, within the confines of the circumstances. If you want to assign a purpose, you can, but that's just bias or artificial labels.
maybe you find a greater purpose, maybe you don't.
But a purpose can be just "breathe, eat, crap until you die." That's a purpose. This is the purpose of most people in the world. You have someone who didn't graduate from high school and not Einstein, they might work as a convenience store clerk for their entire life. Nothing wrong with that at all, but it's not like it is Norman Borlaug, whose Green Revolution fed billions of people and kept them from starving to death.
All this "find your purpose" stuff just puts a lot of unwarrented pressure on peole and if you can't find one, it is a negative. It won't give you higher happiness or well-being. It will just be a massive frustration and make your life miserable. I guess I'd be more of the mindfulness/live-in-the-moment kind of person.
I have no life purpose or meaning of life. I'm like everyone else, though. Mostly average days, some great days, some shit days. The gaussian distribution, right? I don't think that people who have a "purpose" in life live every day as a 12 hour orgasm. Everyone has mostly average days, some great, some bad.
As far as happiness goes, at least 50% of it is genetic. If you have shitty genetics and have unhappy genes, even if you are happy with the other 50%, you'll never be as happy or at peace as someone with happy genetics. Never. No higher purpose will make someone with unhappy genetics as happy as someone with happy genetics.
So my point would be to not worry about it. Do the best you can do. Plan where you can. Do what you can. Get your pleasures where you can. Before we are turned into dirt.
Maybe take 3 entire hours and listen to Thích Nhất Hạnh's Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life
What is the Purpose of Life? - Sadhguru
I suggest A) if you are religious, to come to know God and follow His plan, and B) if not, consider working to elevate mankind by honesty, the Golden Rule, learning and service, to help by kind example and teaching and work so we all reach some better state.
I have written much more at my tech-simple web site (in profile, suggestions welcome; I also tried to write how I know what I know).
Science can only do so much with the 'internal' meaning. All people I've read are inadequate or point to religion.
Religions, across the board, sure seems to be solely focused on purpose and meaning.
If you want purpose outside yourself, I'd look to a religion or a group that functions similarly. I dug Alan Watts and the like for awhile. More recently have liked St Augustine and other apologetics.
I know the concept religion causes raised flags but I do suggest that you are least give it an open mind while you search.
Some subjective sense being correlated with blah blah blah doesn't mean any such thing objectively exists. It doesn't. You have no purpose. Nobody designed you. You're free.
I have been a web developer since the late 90s. In the last few years, I’ve moved somewhat into shooting travel content - getting paid to go on adventures. It happened after I turned 40 and I wouldn’t have seen it coming even just a year prior.
Personal values are the things you care about. Going through a list of core values[0] and rating them on a 1–5 scale should give clarify on what really matters to you, so you can cleave away the rest. (I’ve also found thinking about conflict in terms of values to be incredibly helpful; when someone is upset about something, and it’s not clear why, my experience has been that it’s because one of their values are being violated.)
Personal values shift somewhat over time (e.g. a financial windfall may make wealth feel less important; having fewer opportunities to meet people may make relationships feel more important), but you’re likely to find that you have a particularly strong affinity to a few key values that don’t really change over time. Using those as a compass, you can find the ‘right’ activities for you by asking whether or not they’re in line with your key values. By doing this, you’re able to live a life that feels more fulfilling.
Once you’ve done this, there will probably be various things that come up where you find yourself uncertain or still not quite like you know what your purpose is, but it is hopefully enough to get going on the right path. Books providing an overview of all the different philosophies and their evolution over time might be interesting too to pick one of those that feels most right for your life. Good luck!
[0] There are a nearly infinite number of these on the internet. I don’t know of any one in particular that’s especially good. https://www.qualitycharters.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/H... is one option that came up for me that seems reasonable.
In the meantime, have fun, take care of those you care about, and try to leave your corner of the world better than the way you found it. Cultivate a skill you enjoy. Touch grass and talk to people without a technological intermediary. That's not a presumptuous insult to your lifestyle, we all have to keep that in mind.
This in addition to some Stoic concepts (take care of things you can control, etc.) really helped me.
Purpose is the reason you had your own "hero" story
The unique road you had from your birth till now gave you the strengths and uniqueness to do something you are capable of
I work with engineers to find the balance, and to identify your own calling or purpose
should you be interested, my email is in my profile and we can schedule a 22 min call
Have children.
You can think about your most treasured memories or possessions or relationships and draw from them.
Ask HN: What's the Point of Life? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28866558 - October 14, 2021 (164 comments)
Kurosawa film, "Ikiru" is worth a watch too
Otherwise I believe finding purpose is a deeply personal journey for every single person on the planet. Good luck!
if humans have a purpose, it is to help other humans. silicon valley types do not agree with this in my experience (they seem to require profit potential to do anything it seems) and that is a cancerous view, so don’t adopt it.
just help people once you are in a position to do it without harming yourself. Not for profit; for free. because it is the right thing. if anyone has a purpose, that is it. all else is selfishness and greed.
Purpose is then to live a life where you don’t compromise on your values.
Cannot recommend the Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck enough. Read it and you'll figure out your values and your purpose.
It would truly surprise me if many people _actively_ find their purpose, and it would surprise me almost as much if most people find theirs at all. Mine, i discovered rather by accident while not thinking about it at all. Instead, it simply occurred to me one day that i had found, and been living, my purpose for a good long while before realizing it.
It's actually a pretty interesting question, one that David Chapman tackles in his work-in-progress book Meaningness. In fact, the appetizer for the book tackles it starting from the idea of purpose: https://meaningness.com/an-appetizer-purpose
I don't think that a purpose is particularly helpful for people. If you don't have one, then live your life as well as you can and you will see patterns emerge. Follow them, be yourself even when it is hard. Good luck!
Otherwise read philosophy given that’s the main topic.
Counselor Jerry: A spark isn't a soul's purpose. Oh, you mentors and your passions. Your "purposes." Your "meanings of life." So basic.
This is a solvable problem.
1. Frank Martela and Michael F Steger. The three meanings of meaning in life: Distinguishing coherence, purpose, and significance. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 11(5):531–545, 2016. doi:10.1080/17439760.2015.1137623.
2. Roy F Baumeister. Meanings of life. Guilford Press, 1991.
3. Viktor E Frankl. Man’s search for meaning. Simon and Schuster, 1985.
4. Roy F Baumeister, Kathleen D Vohs, Jennifer L Aaker, and Emily N Garbinsky. Some key differences between a happy life and a meaningful life. The journal of positive psychology, 8(6): 505–516, 2013. doi:10.1080/17439760.2013.830764.
5. Crystal L Park and Login S George. Assessing meaning and meaning making in the context of stressful life events: Measurement tools and approaches. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 8 (6):483–504, 2013.
6. Blake A Allan, Ryan D Duffy, and Richard Douglass. Meaning in life and work: A developmental perspective. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 10(4):323–331, 2015. doi:10.1080/17439760.2014.950180.
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8. Michael F Steger. Experiencing meaning in life: Optimal functioning at the nexus of well-being, psychopathology, and spirituality. In The human quest for meaning, pages 211–230. Routledge, 2013.
9. Bryan J Dik, Ryan D Duffy, and Brandy M Eldridge. Calling and vocation in career counseling: Recommendations for promoting meaningful work. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 40 (6):625, 2009. doi:10.1037/a0015547.
10. Lindsay G Oades, Michael Steger, Antonelle Delle Fave, and Jonathan Passmore. The Wiley Blackwell handbook of the psychology of positivity and strengths-based approaches at work. John Wiley & Sons, 2017.
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12. Bryan J Dik and Ryan D Duffy. Make your job a calling: How the psychology of vocation can change your life at work. Templeton Foundation Press, 2012.
13. Login S George and Crystal L Park. Are meaning and purpose distinct? An examination of correlates and predictors. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 8(5):365–375, 2013. doi:10.1080/17439760.2013.805801.
[0]: https://www.esalen.org/podcasts/abraham-maslows-1966-lecture...
I start with the premise that 1) We can identify periods of our lives that felt meaningful/purposeful, etc and 2) Creating a life where we feel that way more often is an attractive goal.
If you don't agree with those premises then the rest of what I'm going to write won't be relevant. My guess is you do, and so do most of the people responding to this thread.
Now the tricky thing is that while we can identify the periods of our lives that felt most meaningful, it's incredibly difficult to define meaning/purpose in the abstract. This is an unfamiliar problem for most of us. It's my experience that most analytically gifted people live their lives by establishing a set of clear goals that we then use as lenses for making day to day decisions.
If my goal is to have a large impact on the world I have enough of a sense for what that looks like that I can make decisions about what to focus on to make it more likely that will happen. The same can be said about spending more time with friends, or working on challenging problems. We can confidently visualize what the world looks like where we are doing those things, and set ourselves to the task of making it a reality. (Goals are actually proxies for feelings we want, but that's a topic for another day).
The confidence (accurate or not) that we can achieve these goals is what gives us the motivation to pursue them. From an adaptive perspective it's clear why this is the case. Pursuing impossible goals leads to wasted time and resources, so you would expect our motivation system to be directly influenced by the likelihood of success.
This presents a challenge for our desire to experience more meaning and purpose. Without the ability to define meaning in the abstract we can't confidently visualize a future where they are present. This makes it extremely difficult to know what to orient towards, and even we can tell ourselves a story that seems plausible, challenging to conjure the motivation to pursue it.
It may be that this is in fact by design. We have all had the experience of returning to activities or modes of being that once felt extremely meaningful, but no longer produce the desired effect. Simply replicating what's been meaningful in the past isn't the best strategy. My belief is that meaning/purpose is a different kind of thing and we need to use a different mechanism than we do to achieve other kinds of goals in order to produce more of it in our lives.
We can't orient towards meaning and purpose in the way we do for professional success, but we can train ourselves to make decisions that lead to more of it. The first step I recommend people take is to describe the meaningful experiences in their past in as much detail as possible. This has two benefits. First you're training your brain to recognize those states. The more detail you go into and the more experiences you unpack, the more you're conditioning yourself to recognize all the subtleties that made that experience meaningful. Focus on the other feelings that were present during those periods. Did you feel challenged? Supported in a certain way? Were you learning? Playing? In my experience the specific constellation of feelings associated with meaning will differ for each person which is why the prescriptive definitions of meaning don't resonate for most of us.
I think of feelings as highly compressed data formed by our lived experience rather than the ideas we have in our minds. This is the domain of meaning, and in order to orient towards persistently meaningful lives, we need to actively engage with that system.
By training yourself to recognize the feelings associated with your past experiences of meaning, that awareness becomes available to you in your day to day life. You can ask yourself if a particular choice is more or less likely to lead to more meaning, and with enough practice you will feel an answer. You can think of this a lot like physical skills that you learn. You know how to ride a bike, but you couldn't teach someone else how to do it simply by describing it to them. Your body learns the highly complex series of motions you need to perform in order to stay balanced while peddling, all without you needing any conscious understanding of how it works.
The world is infinitely complex and we can't pay attention to everything in our environment. When you climb onto a bike you automatically attune to the inputs you need to be aware of in order to ride it successfully. Orienting towards meaning requires a similar action. You need to proactively put yourself in a frame of mind that preferences the inputs that will help you make decisions that lead to more meaning.
Once you've trained yourself well enough on your past experiences you can ask yourself if a certain decision is likely to lead to more meaning, and more often than not you'll get a felt answer of yes or no.
Another way to think of this feeling system is as an AI that's simply processing too much data for you to be consciously aware of. It learns the incredibly complex pattern of meaning by training on your past experiences, and is going to be far more effective than your analytical mind in determining what future experiences are likely to produce.
There's some subtlety in how to train yourself most effectively, but this is the general idea, I hope it's helpful!
Nowadays, I consider myself fairly happy. Here is an incomplete list of things I did to get closer to answering the ever elusive question:
- I retraced my childhood memories to resurface long forgotten hobbies and activities that brought me joy, focus, and interest. For instance, as a kid I used to spend hours and hours drawing my favourite FFVII characters, puzzling over difficult math problems, playing piano, and more. Not all of these turned out to still be interesting to the adult me, but if you're looking for ideas on what kind of activites might bring you fulfilment, your childhood interests (or their underlying motivations) are often a good place to start.
- I attempted a bunch of new things over the course of multiple years. A non-exhaustive list of things I tried: learning German, living in 3 different countries, running a marathon, doing a triathlon, going to law school, taking watercolor painting lessons, doing a sculpting course, learning jazz piano, spending time in a Buddhist temple, creating a mobile app, etc. etc. Most of these I invested 3+ months of regular commitment to give them a proper shot, but some only ~20 hours. And if you want to know how many actually stuck with me, optimistically I'd say about 20%–but going through the 80% to find this 20% was more than worth it for me. Point being, I spent a lot of time (and energy) trying out things I didn't really end up liking in order to find the few that I did.
- Lots and lots of introspection and self-inquiry regarding my emotions, motivations, and values. What do I stand for? What can I not live without? Why do I do the things I do? Why did I choose the paths I chose? What do I wish I could have chosen? What did I stop doing? Where are these emotions coming from? Nobody could answer these questions for me, and oftentimes neither could I. But I didn't stop turning them over and over in my head throughout all the years, and slowly over time I started to form half-answers and then eventually full answers to some of these questions.
- Sometimes I landed at major crossroads in my life, and I just couldn't decide. For a long time I remained in this limbo state, agonizing over which path to take, until I learned that just picking something and moving on is a much better approach. Biasing towards action helped me gain key information faster than just sitting around thinking, and I learned either that I do in fact enjoy the path I chose or that I would I rather be doing - Whenever I wasn't sure about how much I valued something, I just cut it out of my life. The things that are truly important to me have a way of coming back to haunt me until the point I can't stand not pursuing them any longer. Example 1: I didn't play piano for a few years, and deeply missed it by the second year. Example 2: I didn't do any rigorous academic study for 5+ years, and one day realized how important intellectual rigor was to my own sense of identity. I don't know if I actually recommend this method though, as it's an expensive way to learn a lesson and some consequences are difficult to reverse (if at all). I often wonder if there are better ways of determining what's valuable to myself without going through this separation process. I'm going to stop here before I end up rambling; I hope the above will help you in one way or another. All in all, I believe it's worth searching for a life of purpose, whatever that might mean to you. To strive for anything less feels like doing yourself a disservice, because what's the point of living if you're not enjoying life in all its glorious suffering and beauty? So good luck, I'll be racing you to the peak!
Preface: I feel at peace, and guided by inner purpose now. Experience has taught me that all is fleeting, so I am quite confident there will a time where I don't feel this way. Therefore, take all I am about to write with a grain of salt, even as it applies to my experience. These thoughts all reset on certain "spiritual" assumptions that are true in my experience. I ask that you use discipline in your thinking and clarify what is true to you and your experience and not assume that anything I say is supposed to be taken as true, for you, or in any absolute sense.
Everything seems a bit paradoxical to me these days.
Purpose appears to be something that just is, like a knife's (primary) purpose is to cut, an apple tree's purpose is to bear apples, and somewhere far removed in complexity, each human has a purpose that is as clear as those two examples. Simultaneously, we/consciousness possess or appears to possess some kind of free will, or ability to chose that allows us some latitude in defining our purpose.
The proverbial fruit in the Biblical garden of eden story is from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. I have come to interpret that as marking a turning point where animals became "man" and "woman", because our purpose was no longer sole encoded in our biology, but something changed where we could chose to work in alignment, or against our biology.
As beings with free will, but also living in or as biological machines, we have this dual existence where some of our purpose is given to us, as certain genetic differences manifest as "advantages" in certain areas of life, and we are also free to steer our lives. Expand genetics to include our environment, "nurture", and even "karma" (why are two identical twins often so different?, and we are always existing in a certain state, with some hardware (our bodies including brains), and software (our minds, emotions, any woo stuff you're into). This is where we "find" our purpose, as it is something inherent to the nature of the state of our system. However, I'd argue that as beings with free will, we can introspect and sculpt this state and also create our purpose, by changing the hardware and software that we experience "the world" through.
To summarize that, we are both spirit (consciousness with free will), and also biology, so "finding" a purpose to me has been balancing and harmonizing what is currently true with my desires and intentions, knowing that even my desires and intentions come through the user interface that is our biology.
The following statements might sound like platitudes, and yet for me they have been immensely transformative.
No amount of pure thinking ever got me anywhere. At some point, lived experience was (and continues to be) the only way "forward". Our minds are only maps to some extent, and until we've walked the territory, it's all just conjecture. I can't overstate how important good food, sleep, exercise, meditation, and "inner work" have been. It's been so important to just be present in the moment, in my body, with my feelings and emotions. The present is all there ever is, so being there seems rather important.
So the goal is to have visibility of ROI and to be working to make the number go up. Only I can determine my ROI, and it's based on a criteria which is shaped by my values and world-view [0].
For visibility, get clear on your values and world-view. There's a bunch of value-finder exercises online to get the ball rolling, and you can always refine them over time until you have words that resonate deeply for you. [1] If your world-view adds additional metrics for ROI, write those down too.
To make the number go up, align your investment of "life time" with these criteria. This will inevitably get you out of your comfort zone, taking risks and engaging with life on a deeper level.
I've recently realized that my cushy job isn't aligned with my value of effectiveness, and the low ROI has been enough to shake me out of my complacency. I'm now spending nights and weekends working on a new career path with high ROI, and I feel a sense of direction, motivation and meaning in this pursuit. It's got me more engaged in my life and more willing to take risks because there's a purpose to it all now. Notice how these are all benefits of having "purpose".
Aligning "life time" with values creates a positive ROI, while leveraging skills, strengths and passion helps us increase this number. I propose that a passionate and gifted programmer working on a product that isn't aligned with their values is going to have a lower ROI than their colleague who is just phoning it in for their paycheck.
Doing things you're good at increases your output, and doing things you're passionate about makes the work less-taxing. Mark Manson has an excellent article about finding your favorite flavor of shit sandwich [2] and it's essentially activities in which you have a competitive advantage - let's call this your "niche". Working in your niche helps you do more easier, which amplifies your rate of ROI.
The best tool I've used for finding my niche was doing the Clifton Strengths Assessment with a certified coach [3]. It's nice to have a cute list of "my top 10 strengths" but the real value is how those strengths interact with each other to create the beautiful and unique human that you are, and that takes a professional to really unpack it.
TLDR (courtesy of GPT3): The purpose of life is to create a positive return on investment (ROI) of our "life time". To do this, we need to be clear on our values and world-view, and then align our actions with these. This may mean taking risks and getting out of our comfort zone, but it will ultimately lead to a more fulfilling life. Skills, strengths and passion can help us achieve our purpose, but they are not the purpose itself.
[0] - As seen in other comments, certain world-views have a prescribed purpose built in to the equation, such as "relationship with God" and "having kids". Others tend to have more of a "do what makes you happy" flavor. This is evident in the ongoing debate between "you have to change the world!" and "no you don't".
[1] - Most systems constrain it to a list of ~6 core values and I've found this is about my limit for keeping them in working-memory.
[2] - https://markmanson.net/life-purpose
[3] - https://www.gallup.com/cliftonstrengths/en/252137/home.aspx
The meaning of life is to create meaning.
Now let's get to the real question; How do you live with mindful intention? How do you create the meaning you want?
This is the hard part:
First, you have to know where you are starting from. You have to be honest with yourself. What do you value? Not 'what do you feel like you /should/ value?'. What do you /really/ value? This takes dispassionate introspection. Recall your physically manifested behavior over time. How would someone observing you describe how you spend your time? What conclusions would they come to about what you value based on your behavior? It's important not to have selective memory here. Your mind will rebel. You'll probably tell yourself nice stories about your motivations or circumstances that explain away behavior that isn't, at first blush, ideal. Just be honest. Assume that the person you have been was perfectly rational and has completely fulfilled what they truly value with their behavior. What are those values?
Now, the point of that introspection isn't to beat yourself up. Watch a ton of TV? Perhaps you value a well-told story or time to relax. Spend yourself into debt? Perhaps you value living in the moment and the experiences that spending brings. It's ok, and you probably should, put the best possible spin on the values that motivate the observed behaviors. This is your baseline. These are your current values that you actually hold. This is your current purpose and meaning. Don't like them? Change them. Like the values but not how they currently manifest in your behavior? Change the behaviors, but don't ignore the values and motivations that lead to those behaviors.
It doesn't get easier from here. While going through that exercise you may have had some negative emotions. Guilt. Denial. Shame. Confusion. Envy of an imagined self living a better life. You may have imagined 'better' ways you could have behaved. Now you have to decide, knowing what you now know about yourself and where you currently stand, which of those emotions are intrinsic and which are externally imposed. You want to keep as much of the intrinsic motivators and dump as much of the external motivators as possible. They are not always easy to tell apart. Decide what behaviors would satisfy your intrinsic motivators and work those behaviors into your life. Revisit this process often. External motivators may masquerade as intrinsic. You can tell them apart by whether these new behaviors are fulfilling over time or continue to be a painful struggle.
You'll learn to recognize Yourself over time and you won't need to look backward and pick yourself apart too much to figure out your Intent. Finding something motivating, formulating intent, and acting to realize that motivation will become just how you live. You'll be creating meaning and purpose from moment to moment.