I sometimes wonder what is the meaning of our lives, especially after some really tough days. Is the purpose, to get a job, get married, buy a house, and have kids? Is the purpose to buy as much stuff as possible and cause as much pollution and environmental damage as possible? Or is the purpose to earn as much money as possible?
When I was younger I started thinking about the fact that I view the world from my own perspective and everything sort of revolves around me, and then I started thinking well, what happens when I will no longer be alive? Will the world still be from my perspective? Will my soul stay on? I started thinking about reincarnation and that my soul would transfer into a cat. After watching many movies I started thinking well maybe I would become a ghost or angel, or go to heaven....
I still think about those things because the question that always is at the back of my mind, is if I die tomorrow, would the world continue living and in from whose point of view will it be from?
Ultimately though....what I've learned in the past few months is most people's goals (not all) here are to make as much money as possible in whatever means necessary, be able to buy a nice house, nice car, have kids, go on vacations....but the real question is first off whether that brings happiness and secondly is there more to life than this? Some people who are more religious say that yes there is...and people often turn to religion to bring more meaning and control and understanding to their lives but is there more to it than that?
Does each person have an actual purpose that they are meant to fulfill or are we all just a large science experiment of what would happen if humans started to live beyond their means, and deplete the resources that are needed for their survival without any thought to the consequences and the future?
The reality is that the resources that we think are so plentiful are really finite, and oil that helps now sustain every part of our lives will run out in 50-100 years, as will coal and natural gas, so the real question becomes is the purpose of our lives to deplete all the resources that are present so our future generations have none??
So to end this philosophical post, I posted a link for a very interesting video that I saw today but the impact of the gulf oil spill and the consequences that would occur if one would happen here in Canada.
http://www.cbc.ca/documentaries/doczone/video.html
Yeah. This is actually one of the reasons I'm not such a fan of the US (and Canada by extension, I guess? Tho I love Canada). They don't seem to have a goal other than to make money and live comfortably. I mean over here, it's getting to be that more and more people are becoming like that too. But what kind of values is that to pass on to your children?
ReplyDeleteYeah it's very frustrating, now it seems that more and more kids are hooking into the whole, ipod, ipad, iphone, i....and of course spend all day and night texting instead of living life, and of course it's a competition of who will get the newest device first.
ReplyDeleteI sometimes question what we're teaching kids...There has to be more to life than just working in this ridiculous rat-race of getting newer and newer devices and spending more and more money on stuff instead of actually spending time with each other.