The Purpose Of Life

If you've ever been a maladjusted teen, or gone through any serious bout of depression, you may have asked yourself "What is the purpose of life?". A lot of perfectly normal human beings have gone through periods of time when this seemed like an important question to answer. For many normal people it may even have become weighty enough to bring on some thoughts about suicide. Now, I don't have proof of this, but I'm willing to bet (something) that humans are the only animals on earth who waste time wondering why they're here and if the reason is good enough for them to stay.

For all the other animals I'm pretty sure it boils down to this: you're born because you're parents had the urge to pass on their genes, (because their greatest instinct is to survive), then you spend your life living from day to day engaged in the same activities your parents were: survival. You eat, you shit, you hunt, you maybe frolic occasionally in the spring time, you fight for territory, you hide from the elements, and eventually (if you're lucky) you will procreate just like your parents did in order to pass on your genes which is just a fancy way of surviving after you're dead.

I may have mentioned before how I wasn't raised watching very much TV, but I was allowed to watch every nature program there was. Lorne Green was like a funky uncle. As a hippie child I not only saw humans in all their natural (though hardly most attractive) state in which they ate, drank, consumed weird mushrooms (and occasionally left the tea pot of them in the communal living space where two year olds could grab a bad trip-just ask my brother for his earliest memory and you may understand the rest of his life), getting naked, fighting, and in the end, having tons of babies. Babies are everywhere in the hippie world. Too many of them in my opinion. Us babies cropped up like crying surprises to the stoned adults who basically just wanted to make music, eat, have sex whenever they felt like it, and communicate with the cosmos on the john.

What I'm saying is that between the people I was around and the nature shows I got to watch (once we no longer lived in the commune, there were no TV's in the commune that I remember) I pretty much understood at a very young age what the purpose of life was. As I've mentioned before, I was a suicidal teen, so I'm sure I must have asked "What's the purpose of life anyway?" out of a sense of obligation. But that's not what made me wonder if life was worth living. For me it was a question of self loathing, anger, deep sorrow, and hopelessness that made life seem impossible and too horrible to bear.

I got myself out of this quagmire through my own determination. Lucky for me that I had a buried spark in my spirit that refused to be completely obscured by all the ugly trash in my brain. I had to find ways to uncover it, but I kept at it because some part of me knew that eventually I was going to be capable of emerging and that it would prove worth the effort. I did emerge, only to figure out that I was (just as I suspected) a crazy person. I didn't get official confirmation of this for another eleven years after the last serious thoughts of suicide receded. Doesn't matter though, I knew that my brain had been getting in my way.

But that's not what I wanted to talk about exactly. Long after I came to appreciate the million reasons I had for staying alive, I still had friends grappling with the whole "Purpose of Life" fixation. I'm going to call it a fixation because after a while, if you don't get it, it is most likely because you don't want to. I had a friend who constantly struggled with this question. She felt that in order to justify taking up space on this earth she needed to have a good enough reason. She was looking for what function she could fulfill on this earth that was actually necessary. I tried for years to stave off what I feared she would do: kill herself. It made me crazy that I had found peace with this whole issue when I was seventeen, but that she still hadn't come to terms with it at twenty seven years of age. It made me frantic that no matter how much I talked to her, coached her, poured my fired up spirit into hers, she still asked the same damn question in the same dreary way.

Eventually we drifted. I think about her quite a lot still. Living her life on the edge in San Francisco. I think of how I met her when I was fourteen and she was the first friend I ever had that was really like me. I had passionately wanted to share with her what I had found out about life, I had wanted to give her what I knew wrapped up in a beautiful package so she could get on with her life and find her happiness. Because happiness is out there for every damn person if only they want to find it and are willing to work for it.

What I learned is that you can't make a person want to live. You can't force a person to see beauty in the world if they aren't ready. I learned that no matter how much you love a person, you can't live their life for them, you can't answer that damn question if they don't want it answered. The answer to that question is still the simplest answer ever. There is no purpose to life except to stay alive as long as possible and to leave your genes behind if you're able. That's all mama nature expects of any of us. We humans make up the rest of that weighty shit. No antelope out there worries that they aren't performing a great enough service to their community of antelopes, they don't wonder if they should volunteer a little more often, or if they're meant to invent the next great device for finding watering holes in the desert.

What people are looking for when they ask that question is for reassurance that they belong, they are looking for self worth, they are looking for their direction. If you get busy living, your direction will become evident. If you stop asking the question and start exploring, you will find many possible paths. The most amazing thing about life? You don't have to take just one path your whole life. When people ask that question they're looking for their place in the human pack.

Reasons I look forward to getting up every day:

• Because coffee is such a blessed beverage and I look forward to it in my sleep.

• Because every day I get up is a day leading to an enjoyable evening with my spouse and my kid drinking beer and eating good food.

• Because I get to watch the world and the people in it unfold which can be incredibly humorous and better than books.

• Because each day I wake up I get to plot new adventures for future days. I won't get to do a fraction of the things I plan, but who gives a flying monkey, it's fun to just imagine the possibilities and run with it.

• Because each day I wake up is another day in which I may get to hang out with and be inspired by the people I love, or meet new people who will change the way I see things and broaden my already large world.

• Because I really love taking showers and baths. When you're dead you get really unclean before completely disintegrating, who wants to go through that until forced to? Plus I'm not fond of maggots.

• Because each day is another one in which I can make something, listen to music, watch movies, and try something new.

• Because every day offers new opportunities to eat more cheese.

• Because some mornings you wake up, look out your window, and see a world more impossible than a Thomas Kincaid painting, a sky swathed in fiery pink clouds, and every branch still black as night against it.