What is life?
 

Here is my take:

Life is simply about love. But not about great loves, it is also about the subtle loves--the loves that your heart realizes way before your brain has a clue. It’s about the strangers that walk into your life for six seconds and you glance over or take in their detail never to see them again. Because try as hard as you might to judge and understand them in the fleeting glace, imagination hardly ever comes close to the reality of flesh, memory, and tangible experience. We can never understand the true nature of the people until we learn to love them. And it is such a blessing to be able to learn to understand the world of these subtle loves in our lives. They have life experiences we have never touched. The world is full of these subtle loves and that is what life is all about-- to experience random acts of over and over again with new loves and the new places. And to remind ourselves how beautiful everything is over and over again with the old ones.



I'm a sappy convoluted mess sometimes. I'll take other opinions in order to grow mine :)

Life is about relationships. Well, relationships and struggle.

And taxes.

Life is about relationships, struggle and taxes.

Life is the accumulation of experience

It's that simple

Trying to overcome suffering and find happiness. That's more of the goal of life, but I think it can work either way...

A quote taken from a certain Mr Aleister Crowley sums up my idea of life quite succinctly:

"The joy of life consists in the exercise of one's energies, continual growth, constant change, the enjoyment of every new experience. To stop means simply to die. The eternal mistake of mankind is to set up an attainable ideal."

I agree with this one.

I came in to say something similar.

oh and 42

This being a music forum, I felt that this might be a usable definition:

"What Is Life" is a song by George Harrison and is the first track on side two of his 1970 solo album All Things Must Pass. It was released as the second single from that album in the United States on February 15, 1971 with another album track, "Apple Scruffs," as the B-side. On March 27, "What Is Life" peaked at #10 in the Billboard Hot 100, making Harrison the first member of the Beatles to log two Top 10 solo hits on that chart.

Sorry, I couldn't resist. :)

Taken from Wikipedia, btw.

Life is life.

Na na nanana

I see that and raise you this:

And thence, I politely retreat.

There is no meaning to life and to bother trying to come up with one is silly.

+1

This is what I came to believe life is about, and when I came across this I just smiled and nodded:

Cool Story

In a nutshell, when you die, you meet your maker. He explains that in the universe, there is only him and I. That he set us (I/me and you/me and we are all together) loose to see what we do. The earth may be a training ground, a simulator for the afterlife. But we make it only once we've run through all the instances of humanity. What's after that I don't dare fathom. The author of the story in the link concludes that it's a training ground to be a 'god' for the next round so he can retire. He says there are others like him 'far away' and it would be too hard to explain ... so that's why I'm leaving that lie and waiting.

But we're supposed to learn that every good thing you've ever done you've done for yourself and every bad thing you've ever done you've done to yourself as well.

Ties into karma, what goes around comes around, circle of life, and all sorts.

This is pretty much what I've come to conclude. I feel no need to be of a particular faith. I think it's missing the point and is focusing on the wrong things. Or for church. If it's community you need, find a hobby, friends, heck, I dunno. If you feel compelled to donate to God, donate to a homeless shelter... Tangent, sorry.

Thoughts?

"Cool Story" indeed

Some people use church for all of those things you listed because a church community provides that as well as their message of like minded individuals. People subscribe to a religion to give their life some sort of meaning/purpose and hope that there is something after they pass away. It also gives them something to have faith in and they are weak so they need to be around other people that have stronger levels of faith than themselves.

I guess that's getting a bit off topic but yeah if you want to continue this line of topic, we should probably head over to one of the religious threads with it

Nah I'm cool, we can just stay on topic here...

:afro: :shycouch:

As a biologist, I'd say if life is "about" anything, it's about raising your fitness which is almost the same as having offspring and taking care of your closest family. Going back through generations for billions of years, that's what our ancestors did and we wouldn't have been here if they hadn't.

As a more subjective comment on what I want from life, I want to be happy :)

That is where I used to be. I used to go around (about 2 or 3 years ago) and just ask everyone I met what makes them happy. Most of the responses are "hanging out with friends"--the most interesting response I ever got was "really good art."

Double post, I know. I am terrible about that.

I just wanted to say **** taxes. It's amazing how much money disappears in taxes--I can barely handle it.

What isn't life?

I'm deep.

erm **** taxes but the same taxes you are paying goes to some of the services that i bet you are using every single day.

those services aren't going to pay for themselves

... like a mud puddle.

Life is a brief flicker of light in an eternity of darkness.

life's a beech and then you pine

lol tree humor

The time between when you're born and when you die.

that argument lacks depth.

Anyhow, I am not referring to the tax policy as a whole, social services need to exist which I am a million times happy to give my money to funding. I am referring to general government waste--we have tons of programs/policies that no longer make sense or are outdated that we still keep because of the repercussions politicians would face from their constituents if we got rid of them.

i.e. Social security needs to be addressed. It will **** us over so much if we do not--most politicians wont touch it with a 8 foot rod because in order to make social security feasible again someone is going to loose which means they are going to loose votes.

i.e. How public schools are dealing with cuts--they are cutting positions and classes (instead of administration and bureaucratic waste) because those cuts are the cuts that people notice. When people notice cuts they get inflamed and are more likely to vote to give public schools more money.

When you really look at the system it is very broken.

Also why I am moving to Sweeden when I turn 37.

I was waiting for you to respond because I knew that you would pretend like you don't even know about the services that you use on a daily basis that taxes pay for. You drive right? and even if you don't you still use roads and the roadway repairs are paid for from your taxes.

Police and FireFighter services as also paid from your taxes, sure you might not be using it now but if you need to call 911 for an emergency you will be utilizing it.

Even down to the mail that you get everyday.

Does anyone here think that earth being just a popular TV show on a galactic network is out of the question? (SP Reference) But it does seem possible...

Did you just not read his post? He's not talking about taxes in general. He's talking about waste and beauracratic bull****.

Crowley Quote
 

Good quote from Crowley. Man, the misconceptions that many have of him.
He knew a lot.

yes I read her post, she said mines lacked depth so I provided more of an example just like she did to only talk about specific parts of how the taxes are being used/wasted.

Life is what you, yourself make of it.

People analyze too much.

The answers to life and many other questions lie in this merzbow song. I won't spoil it for you, it would be unfair of me to.

not much to life besides sex

Life is just about continuing the life of ones' species. Where we have consciousness, we overanalyze it - but ultimately life is just about being alive, and ensuring that your species remains alive based on your efforts.

i'm trying to remember some Carl Jung quote about life kindling some light on just mere existence

no, I acknowledged your point. I specifically said that I am more than happy to pay for social services, and i'd have to have my head under a rock for the past 21 years to not realize that taxes pay for police, mailmen, all that ****.

ACTUALLY, I will add depth to your argument WHILE counteracting it at the same time.

1. The police force- mainly state-funded and most of their salaries/fees it cost to run the police force come out of tickets/court fees. If you have ever gotten a ticket you'll realize it costs a lot more than the amount it usually says on the ticket. They are also funded by toll roads. So there are different taxes that fund that programs you are referring too (I was referring to federal/state taxes that come directly out of your pay check)

2. Mailmen- Stamps. Pretty self explanitory.

3. Roads- More state taxes, but sales taxes helps fund them more than you would believe.

TL;DR we see fewer benefits from our federal/state income taxes than we could imagine. Most of it goes to the military/beaucratic ****.

Reference: I interned for a state senator and saw some shocking numbers.

I would think that the money that comes from toll roads go to repairing the highways more than funding state troopers.

I have a hard time believing that stamps revenue is enough to run the whole postal system.

yes I actually do know this sales taxes also help on a more local level for municipalities as well.

I'll have to take your word for it for now since I haven't seen numbers myself or researched it but I just don't feel it's that one sided where a majority goes to military/outdated programs.

This is what life is about:

Aye. I'm not saying that there's no reason to enjoy life at all. I'm just saying that ultimately, all we're here to do is to continue the existence of our species. There's a lot of happiness and fun and love and devastation and sadness and bittersweet moments in between that are still worthwhile. It's not that they're cheapened; they just add to the experience.