We all know that the answer to life, the universe and everything is 42. Unfortunately, this does not help us in deriving any satisfactory conclusions. We humans, being self-aware creatures, are constantly (well, maybe not that constantly) assailed by the philosophical question, "why do I live?". In fact, unless a satisfactory answer to this question is provided, we usually find ourselves no different from the plankton in the ocean, merely drifting where the tide takes us.
Have I arrived at a satisfactory answer? Have I finally attained the ultimate enlightenment that will set me free? No, I have not. The reason for this I believe is that there is no such thing. Through simple logic we can all arrive at the conclusion that life, especially self-aware life is nothing but an un-planned accident in the utter chaos that is the universe. No, I will not accept the "Holy" bible or any other "Holy" book as proof to the contarary. As far as I am concerned, such books are simply works of fiction whose authors convieniently forgot to put in the disclaimer.
Now we come to the heart of the problem. If life has no purpose, why do we live? Why do we do the things we do? A vast majority of us struggle through life, constantly striving to attain better and better standards of living. Why? In the end, we are just going to die. Beyond that, there is nothing. At least, nothing from this world. So how do we inspire and motivate ourself, if not with promises of a non-existant afterlife? The answer is simple, we do it with what I like to call the "goal-screen".
Imagine that life is a road. A road that extends into infinity. We are all walking along that road unaware of when we will abruptly fall dead. So why do we walk at all? There is no destination on the road, so why run? This is where the goal-screen comes in. To ensure that I run on the road, I place a large screen in the distance. A screen that looks like a destination. It cuts off my vision of the eternity that I cannot comprehend and provides me with something tangible that I can reach. Hence, I run.
I don't know how much of this made sense, I apologize for the uncharacteristically large amount of non-sense in this post. This is more of an attempt to clear the clutter in own head than a proper blog post. Still, feel free to add to the mess.
Cheers!