What is the meaning of human life and how to find it

One of the most important questions asked by humanity is what is the meaning of life, why does a person live. For what purpose each person personally is in this world. How to make life meaningful, find meaning and purpose in life.

These questions are nothing new. Over the centuries, these questions have been asked by the most famous philosophers and thinkers. One of the most important secrets that a person is trying to reveal.

In philosophy

In most cases, the meaning of life is perceived and positioned as a philosophical problem. Philosophers of antiquity wrote that the secret of human existence lies in himself, and, trying to know himself, he recognizes the surrounding space. There are several historically recognized points of view on the problem of meaning:

1. The followers and receivers of Socrates said: “It is a shame to die without realizing your spiritual and physical strength.” Epicurus, exploring the topic of human death, urged not to be afraid of it, because the fear of death is inherently irrational: when death occurs, a person no longer exists. However, oddly enough, the attitude towards death significantly influences and determines the attitude towards life.

1. The problem of the meaning of life was also actively discussed in Kant's philosophy. In his opinion, a person in himself is the goal and the highest value, he is an individual and the only creature on the planet capable of independently managing his life, pursuing any goals and achieving them. The great philosopher said that the meaning of a person’s life is not outside, but within himself: at the same time, the determining factor is the idea expressed through moral laws and duties. Kant also tried to describe what “meaning” is. In his opinion, meaning cannot exist independently, as a certain object of reality, it is in the minds of people and it also determines their behavior, forcing them to voluntarily obey the laws of morality and thereby placing a person a step above other living beings on the planet. That is, from Kant’s point of view, a person’s destiny is expressed in the presence of a certain worldview, or religion. At the same time, Kant denies religion as an explanation for the emergence of our world - its significance lies precisely in the fact that it is the basis for the development of human morality.
2. Kant's philosophy was further developed by other German classics. According to Fichte, the search for the meaning of human life on earth is the main task of any philosophical teaching. Comprehension of meaning is the complete agreement of the individual with himself, which is expressed in human freedom, rational activity, and development. Developing and becoming a free and reasonable person, a person changes and improves the surrounding reality.

Throughout the history of philosophy and religion, attempts have been made to find a universal, suitable for everyone, meaning of human existence.

Religion calls on a person to prepare himself for “life after death,” because it is outside the “biological” existence that real life begins. From the position of virtue, the answer to the question: “why do we live?” obvious: to do good deeds and serve the truth. In addition to religious ideas, there is a widespread point of view that sees the purpose and meaning of human life in obtaining physical and moral pleasures and the opposite, which presents suffering and death as the purpose of birth.

In psychology

Psychology also has not ignored the eternally pressing dilemma - why does a person live on earth. At least two directions in psychology are actively searching for a solution to the problem “what is the meaning of human life”:

• The well-known psychologist and philosopher Viktor Frankl worked for a long time to create his own school, focused on the study of a person searching for something worth living for. According to Frankl, goals to achieve true purpose ennoble a person, make him more conscious, intelligent and morally healthy. As a result of his research, the psychologist wrote a book: “Man in Search of the Meaning of Life.” This work contains answers to the most common questions about the search for meaning, covers this topic in detail and offers three ways to achieve it. The first path is aimed at comprehending the purpose of existence through work and bringing it to the ideal; the second way is the experience of feelings and emotions, which in themselves are meaning; the basis of the third is to gain experience through suffering, pain, anxiety and the struggle with earthly adversities along the path of life.
• Psychology has also been and is actively engaged in the study of the meaning of human life in the existential direction or logotherapy. This direction calls a person a being who does not know why and for what he came into this world and his goal is to find this knowledge. Therefore, the center of logotherapy is the psychological aspect of this process. And people have only two ways - either, despite possible failures and disappointments, look for their calling, be responsible for their actions, try, experiment; or - give up at the very beginning of his path and his life will pass without touching awareness.

How to find meaning in life

First of all, it is worth noting that the meaning of life can be understood in different ways, depending on upbringing, culture, and established traditions. It goes without saying that everyone has their own point of view, possibly contradicting another.

Sharp and sudden changes do not always raise doubts about the meaning of life. When everything is good, a person has:

• Money;
• Favorite work;
• Close ones;
• Happiness

and yet something is missing, perhaps it is at this moment that the search for finding your meaning and purpose in life begins. And then you want to fill the void that has arisen. How to do it? There are many examples.

Help others. Popular among successful people who have reached high financial heights: millionaires, show business stars, artists, writers. In theory, such people have everything, but they are looking for an activity that will benefit others and give them satisfaction and meaning in life.

Creation. For many people, life is about constantly creating something. It doesn't matter what it is: increasing wealth, artistic creativity or creating large companies.

Self-realization. The highest need in Abraham Maslow's famous pyramid of needs. To satisfy the need for self-realization, other, basic needs must first be satisfied. For many, self-realization is the main meaning of life. For example, the desire to be a good parent, an outstanding scientist, an athlete. The meaning of life in psychology is sometimes identified with self-realization.

Forms

The goals and meaning of human existence are rarely universal throughout life or consist of the same thing. Most often, they change with age, internal personality changes; or under the influence of external circumstances. For example, in adolescence and adolescence, the solution to the problem - what is the meaning of life - will be: obtaining an education and the necessary skills to start working; after 25 years, the most common answers are starting a family, building a career, improving material living conditions. Closer to retirement age, when life becomes more meaningful, people become puzzled by issues of spiritual development and religion. For some people, the problem of meaning is solved through a hobby in which a person is realized in parallel with the goals listed above. In the latter case, the lives of such people are more fulfilling and bright, because at the same time they achieve several goals and are not heavily dependent on one, which means they experience possible disappointments and obstacles more easily, are able to comprehend them and move on.

Having and raising children is one of the most common types of life goals and meaning in life.

The birth of a child leads to the fact that most of the parents' attention is focused on him: they earn money to provide their child with the best, try to provide a good education, help in difficult periods, and instill the right lifestyle. Most mothers and fathers try to raise their children properly, to instill in them the desire to live according to the principles of justice and high morality. And if this succeeds, the parents believe that the path of life was not passed in vain, it made sense to leave its worthy continuation on earth.

Leaving a mark on the earth is a rarer option for finding meaning. Most often, people with some rare talent are capable of this. These are great scientists, artists, representatives of royal, noble and other families, famous managers, etc. However, not everything is so sad.

A person who does not have a very bright talent, but is hardworking, persistent and purposeful, who lives, understanding and imagining what the meaning of his life can be, can leave his mark on earth.

For example, this is a teacher who puts his soul into his charges, or a doctor who has healed many people, a carpenter who improves people’s lives through his work, an athlete who may not have great abilities, but achieves better results every day, etc.

The problem of achieving meaning in a high-tech society

In the modern world, humanity lives at an accelerated pace and spends a lot of emotional and physical resources to maintain its standard of living. We rarely manage to stop and think about the meaning of human life. Society and progress require compliance with fashion, certain norms, and the format of relationships between people. A person is like a squirrel in a wheel, making thousands of monotonous movements brought to the point of automatism; he does not have time to think about what he himself wants and what he lives for.

Modernity is characterized by the daily pursuit of illusion, false ideals.

The consumer culture does not allow for spiritual development; the moral side of modern man becomes less developed, down-to-earth and primitive; the miracle of life turns into ordinary existence.

Naturally, people have become more susceptible to diseases of the nervous system, depression, hysteria and chronic fatigue. The number of suicides has increased several times over the past decades. Human meaning has become an expensive luxury.

However, for people who are strong in spirit, persistent and resistant to social influence, and capable of thinking, progress opens up new opportunities for self-development and improvement of the world. Now it is much easier to obtain knowledge that contributes to the search for goals and meaning; it’s easier to promote your own ideas: they won’t be led to the gallows or burned at the stake for them; technological capabilities allow you to create and build new objects and items. We live in a relatively calm period and the desire to maintain peaceful relationships, take care of nature, find compromises and grow spiritually is the goal and meaning of human life.

Is a clear, definitive answer to the question of the meaning of life possible? Yes and no. After all, on the one hand, the meaning of life (the meaning of being) is located in the niche of eternal philosophical problems. Eternal, and therefore never before, not one of the ancient philosophers and none of the greatest modern minds could give such an answer that would not make one doubt and try to object to this. But the answer options are completely different.

From the meaning of life, which lies solely in a person’s striving for virtue (after all, virtue is happiness), through the famous slogan of the Epicureans: “eat, drink, be merry,” which means “be content with the external aspects of life,” to the complete denial of any manifestation of the meaning of life .

“Human life is only a manifestation of a certain world will” (A. Schopenhauer).

The pursuit of pleasures, or the pursuit of virtues - all will ultimately lead to disappointment, satiety and boredom. Look, don’t look, there is no… meaning of life. Or maybe it’s worth inventing it then? Perhaps there is a true meaning to this fiction?

“Life before we live it is nothing, but it is up to you to give it meaning” (Jean-Paul Sartre).

Yes... perhaps very wise and philosophical. But it still does not relieve one from the painful search for the question of one’s own meaning in life, especially in a period of hopeless apathy and disappointment.

Alternative view

Introduction

Greetings, O inquisitive mind! Before solving monumental questions a la: “What is the meaning of human life?”, “How to find the meaning of life?” or “Is there a meaning to life at all?”, let’s understand what unites us all.

—

What is the meaning of human life

Someone or something did a great job in inventing us to be so different from each other, but in one thing this something was clearly not very driven, namely in the human need to strive for something. Yes, every person is unique, but there is not a single life in which there would be no dreams, desires, and goals, because we are all moving somewhere in our existence, it is important for us to achieve something, none of us wants to live in vain .

About the need for self-realization

Why is this happening?
When creating a new life, the Universe gives a person a set of resources, usually the set includes a pair of legs and arms, a brain, a bouquet of personal qualities, some kind of crappy character, a number of basic skills, and, well, life itself. Promotional video:
Having taken all this from the shelf and solemnly handed it to you, the Universe voices just one short wish: “This is yours, please use it somehow.”

So we smoothly approached the main human need, which is the basis of everything. We are talking about the need to realize oneself, to reveal one’s potential. The desire that unites us to achieve something and get somewhere is the thirst to satisfy the need for self-realization.

Perhaps here you will cheerfully clap your hands with a joyful exclamation: “Hurray, now I know what the meaning of human life is!” - don’t rush to conclusions. The need to realize oneself is the same need as the need for sleep or food; self-realization is simply part of our existence.

Is there a meaning to life?

The most global joke is that there is no meaning to life. There is not even a concept such as “purpose”. When creating life, the Universe does not ask the question of what this life should result in. This is logical, because by assigning to each person from the start a specific meaning of existence, the Universe deprives us of two things that it itself provides to us - the right of choice and freedom.

This concept, to put it mildly, looks pathetic, but the Universe can only act ingeniously, therefore its whole idea is to provide man with a testing ground for experiments.

You can imagine life as an area of ​​land allocated to you, and the remaining resources, generously given from the universal shoulder, as tools with which you can use this area in the way that seems most fun to you.

If you want, make a garden, or if you want, build an amusement park, a house, a swimming pool, or whatever your bright head can visit. This is the greatness of our existence - we are not limited by how to dispose of ourselves and our lives. We are limited only by the fact that somehow all this must be disposed of (but this is not a limitation, but, on the contrary, a concept leading to limitlessness).

The blessing is not in having a long life, but in how to manage it: it can happen, and it often happens, that someone who lives a long time lives a short time - Lucius Annaeus Seneca.

Why was that very meaning invented?

The idea of ​​the meaning of life is an entirely human invention, and this invention is brilliant if you understand its essence.

First, a little terminology, we already know that the only wish of this world for us is that we realize ourselves. This desire sits so deep in us that we have built a strategy that allows us to unlock our potential.

The essence of the strategy is to streamline your entire life, reducing everything in it to one more or less specific idea in the direction of which you need to move. Thus, the meaning of life is an idea that allows you to realize yourself.

A meaningless life is terrible

A meaninglessly lived life never ends well. Living aimlessly is much easier - it does not oblige you to anything, but it also does not lead to anything. Without an answer to the question “What is the meaning of my life?”, a person cannot direct and use his energy.

The presence of meaning is powerfully focused, which is what allows some of us to do truly monumental things.

When a person does not know which pier he is heading towards, no wind will be favorable for him - Lucius Annaeus Seneca.

Desire to be significant

Every person wants to mean something, it’s hard to feel like a nobody who is not needed by anyone on this planet. Meaning allows us to give our lives weight and significance, because by implementing any idea with the help of yourself, you suddenly begin to matter in your own eyes and in the eyes of the world as a whole.

Interest in life

Another important argument in favor of the genius of the invention called “The Meaning of Life” is that having this idea in the mind keeps us interested in life. Life interests us exactly as long as we need something in it, and when there are no more ideas in our minds, our growth stops and death occurs.

There is no answer to the question of meaning

All this, of course, is very cool, but one critical question remains: what exactly needs to be created on that same land plot, or in other words: “What is the meaning of my life?”

There is no answer to this question anywhere, it does not exist, not only on the Internet, it does not exist in nature, because nature did not intend any specific meaning for us, as we have already found out. Nature has given us the opportunity to choose any meaning ourselves.

While we cannot give you a specific answer, we can provide information that will help you in your search and help you understand how to find meaning in your life.

How does the process of self-realization work?

If any meaning in life is a way to realize oneself, then we need to understand how the process of human realization itself occurs. It is based on five basic principles, based on which we all live.

Some people are perfectly aware of these principles, which allows them to realize themselves in the most effective way, while others are not aware and still follow the same principles subconsciously, although this approach is much less effective.

Great, the intrigue has been created, time to show the cards.

Development

As soon as a male cell successfully meets a female cell, announcing the beginning of a new life, from that moment the constant development of a person begins in all aspects of life. Especially in the first 15 years, this process is striking; a person visually undergoes serious changes, and intellectually he develops at a gigantic pace. The world is constantly improving, forcing us to develop along with it.

Any human achievement is the result of long development, otherwise we would all be able to produce something brilliant from the first minutes of life without much difficulty, but any truly worthwhile result is achieved in a protracted process of acquiring skills, knowledge and practice. To do anything worthwhile, you need to grow from who you are now.

Search

Needless to say, the most popular resources on the Internet are search engines, in which we all look for information of interest.

Life never becomes unambiguous, understandable or simple for a person precisely because the process of self-realization implies a search, which is impossible if all the information you are looking for is already on hand.

The need to search in an attempt to understand the world maintains our interest in life. Any interest or curiosity that arises in us is a desire to find something, which means we search every day.

Another idea of ​​searching is self-knowledge. Every person is wildly interested in knowing what he is like and what he looks like from the outside.

There is no desire more natural than the desire for knowledge - Michel de Montaigne.

Creation

The ability to create is the greatest privilege of man. Take any citizen who left a mark in history, and you will see that he managed to leave a legacy there because he created something grandiose during his life.

Some of them created brilliant music or a film, some invented the wheel, and some created equality between black and white people.

Creation is the process of building up a piece of land using the tools at hand. It is impossible to realize yourself and at the same time not create anything, because the process of unlocking potential itself involves extracting resources from yourself and investing them in your idea - during the course of these manipulations, the creation of something inevitably occurs.

Service

Probably every child, fed up with the constant intrusion of this world into his life, dreamed of simply being left alone on the planet. We invite you to imagine this picture as vividly as possible.

Imagine that right now there is no one left on the planet, not a single person at all. How long will it be fun for you to stay in such a world? We assure you that it will not be long, and all because each of us needs to serve.

What distinguishes a successful person from the rest? — he shares with the world the best that he has, makes a contribution. What makes a person influential is not his talent or superpowers, but the significant benefit this all brings to other people. A detailed debriefing on the topic of the need to share has already been discussed in the article on the law of equilibrium of the Universe.

The life of an individual has meaning only to the extent that it helps to make the lives of other people more beautiful and noble - Albert Einstein.

The element of service in human life was not invented by chance. Everything on Earth strives for unity, and service is our way of creating unity within our ranks. Only thanks to other people do we have the opportunity to express ourselves and feel our importance. Look at our world, we constantly use someone’s services and each of us provides some services to others. Every person has his environment with which he interacts daily.

Of all the five principles, this is the least obvious, because we have become too distracted by separating ourselves from others and have become disunited. The distance between people is now too great: we have divided the planet into countries, invented religions, subcultures, families, social statuses and a bunch of other factors - all this so that everyone can define themselves in some category. Coming to the idea of ​​serving while in this position is not very easy.

Love

Love is the thrill with which a designer assembles his new car, or the dedication with which a titled athlete trains, or the diligence with which a director makes his film. In this context, “love” can be understood as a hellish and irresistible desire to do something.

Self-realization is a life-long journey; a reactive driving force is needed to be able to travel this path, and love looks great in this role. The inability to do what you love is one of the main reasons why people are lazy.

Without love, nothing can be beautiful, therefore everything that is most essential is always created with love and thanks to love.

Misconceptions about the meaning of life

In modern society, there are several established opinions regarding the meaning of life. These are ideas that many of us believe in, but they are completely outside the concept of self-realization that we are talking about here. Let's look at them in more detail so that someone doesn't inadvertently make the wrong choice.

Life is the meaning of life

“What is the meaning of human life? “You have a life - live, just be, this is your great meaning” - this is the traditional understanding of this idea, and, alas, we often live with it.

Let's return to the metaphor, where life is the land area allocated to a person. What deep meaning is embedded in this site and can it exist in principle if it is not used in any way, is not implemented, is not built up?

Life is just a space within which you can express yourself; it cannot be meaning, but it is a resource that allows you to realize any meaning.

The idea of ​​making life the meaning of life is very convenient for humanity, since it is very easy to follow, in short, you don’t have to follow anything at all, nothing forces you to move, you just exist and that’s it. Apparently this is why this idea is so popular, but about as mediocre, because it does not allow a person to reveal himself.

There is only one life, you have to take everything from it

This idea is another way to understand the idea that life has meaning. If you imagine that there is only one life, then a person simply has no right to make mistakes, because you are not given another chance.

It’s funny, but here in our desire to “take everything” we make mistakes already at the start. Self-realization is not “taking everything”, but “searching within yourself, extracting what you find and giving it with love” - these are two fundamentally different ideas.

Therefore, any desire to accumulate more money, cars, houses or anything else without thinking about how you will use it for self-realization is an extremely stupid desire.

A person may have 15 bulldozers, 300 workers under his command and a lot of money, but if, having all this, he does not build up the site, then everything he has accumulated will be worth nothing.

The meaning of finding happiness and success

Among the previous ideas, this one is the most sane, but it has one significant inaccuracy, which lies in a misunderstanding of what happiness and success are.

These concepts cannot be the purpose of existence, but are usually the consequence of existing with a suitable purpose. If a successful meaning is chosen and a person moves in its direction, then happiness and success will become a pleasant consequence of this process and an indicator that the person is effectively realizing himself.

Strive not to achieve success, but to ensure that your life has meaning - Albert Einstein.

How to find meaning in life

To find the answer to the question “What is the meaning of human life?” it is necessary to imagine how the process of acquiring that very meaning occurs.

How does a person find meaning?

Thoughts constantly appear in our minds, and among these thoughts there are ideas. Ideas may either not interest us, and then we safely let them go, or ideas may interest us, as a result of which we have a desire to implement the idea that has arisen.

We then begin to explore the idea that interests us. Research is moving towards an idea in order to understand its depth and significance. If in the process of research a person begins to realize the full power of an idea, it becomes the meaning of his life. After this, his entire existence in all its specifically taken moments will be directed towards the realization of the found meaning.

When you discover such a monumental idea, you don’t have to think: “Is this really the meaning of my life?” - this question simply does not arise in the head, because everything is so clear to a person. You don’t have to spend a long time and painfully adjusting your life to this idea; the idea itself absorbs you headlong.

In general, the process of acquiring any meaning occurs according to the same algorithm: idea - desire - research - finding meaning.

Follow the desire

There is no recipe on the topic “How to find the meaning of life,” because this is an entertaining process of searching and creating, which a person cannot be deprived of. But there is one fantastic recommendation - do not ignore your desire.

Desire is the measure of value - Baltasar Gracian.

Desire is something you can safely rely on. Our general plague lies in the fact that, under the pressure of public opinion, our own limitations, complexes and other bullshit, we push most of our desires far away. This explains the harsh reality in which the majority of the population is engaged in something that does not find much meaning and that, frankly, simply does not like. We too rarely listen to our desires.

If you have a desire to realize an idea, explore it, move in the direction of this idea, try to evaluate its depth, because the desire did not arise within you by chance, try to understand why this idea grabbed you so much.

When we begin to explore our desires, we begin to truly search, and ultimately we find. It doesn’t matter at all what the idea is: opening a coffee shop, making people’s lives fun, or making a snowman out of the ground in June.

If you see in your idea an opportunity for self-realization and it is clear to you how to implement the above-mentioned five principles in the midst of this process, you should definitely pay attention to your idea, sooner or later with this approach you will give meaning to life.

Ask "Why?"

There is one exercise that allows you to get closer to the answer to the question “What is the meaning of life?” Whatever you do and whatever you think, ask yourself “Why?”

For example:

- Why do I go to work? To receive money.

- Why get money? To provide yourself with what you need and survive.

- Okay, in that case, why do you need to survive?

Or:

- Why do I need this drawback? He makes me stronger.

- Why become stronger? This is my development process.

- Okay, but why do you need to develop?

A person who has the meaning of existence in his head will eventually come to his meaning from any initial question, because everything in his life is aimed at realizing this meaning.

Well, if you have not yet decided on your monumental idea, then this exercise will allow you to find several thoughts that will be close to it.

The meaning of life is fickle

Perhaps you are now thinking that it is absolutely impossible to make a mistake in the main thing, and from here it is not entirely clear how to find something uniquely suitable for life. Here it is necessary to understand that a person is constantly growing and what seemed most significant to him today may seem insignificant tomorrow and give way to a more monumental idea.

This is natural, we literally grow from one idea and come to another. Even if an idea remains the same over the years, a person begins to understand it more fully and broadly.

All this is an integral part of the search and development process, therefore, when choosing a monumental idea and following your desire, you should not worry too much about the fact that after some time this idea will lose significance. It is important to realize that if the current idea is not explored, the larger idea may not be discovered at all, making it impossible to reach our potential.

Summary

Let's condense a long story into a few key paragraphs to consolidate the layer of information that hit you so hard on the head.

The main human need is the need to realize oneself as much as possible. To do this, resources have been entrusted to us, and we need to understand how to use them.

Initially, there is no meaning in life; we ourselves invent meaning in order to be able to reveal ourselves. In view of this information, a specific answer to the question “What is the meaning of human life?” does not exist in nature, we ourselves need to create it.

The process of human realization is based on five pillars: development, search, creation, service and love. Any truly worthwhile meaning in life is always subject to these five principles.

In an effort to understand how you can find meaning in life, it is important to listen to your desire. Ideas that give rise to desire in us are definitely worth exploring, because among them is what we are looking for.

Here, a life thriller about the meaning of life ends. If you managed to make it this far amid this verbal battle, you will receive universal respect and a little luck for your search! Amen.

Team "At the Top of the Mind"

The meaning of human life from the point of view of religion

So, the meaning of life is an eternal question of philosophy, but what is interesting is that, along with this, the question of the meaning of life always has a clear and fundamental answer in religion.
Of course, there are many religions, but in the modern world, as a result of globalization, we are increasingly limited to three world religions: Christianity, Islam and Buddhism. So maybe it’s worth delving into the religious answer to the meaning of life? At least taking into account the fact that, despite such a diverse nature of world religions, they all look in the same direction, answering this most important question in human life. Exploring the question of the meaning of life from the point of view of religion, we certainly look into the realm of the transcendent. In other words, we can comprehend the meaning of life only by “stepping over”, “going beyond”, “transgressing” the boundaries of life itself. But this does not mean at all that you need to die in order to find out the true meaning of life. Although, from the point of view of religion, here the secret meaning of the eternal question will be revealed to us in its entirety. But, fortunately, even before this critical point we are able to comprehend the main goal of human life.

Oddly enough, almost all religions see in human life a deep meaning, a holy (or better said, correct) purpose and an important goal. This goal is essentially the same for all religions and it is ultimately aimed at man and serves man. Thus, in Christianity, where, following dogmatic theology, the meaning and purpose of human life lies in becoming like God, inheriting a life with God that would be eternal and blessed, and therefore in the need for continuous knowledge.

In Islam, the meaning of life is to worship Allah, surrender to the Almighty, and submit to God. In Buddhism, given the religion's denial of the idea of ​​a first cause or creator God, the meaning and main purpose of life is the end of suffering. At first glance, the meaning of life in Christianity and Islam seem similar. And at the same time, they also seem somehow very distant from what can be directed at a person and serve for him, be good for him, and therefore what he sees as his own happiness. After all, inheritance or submission to God and one’s own happiness look like diametrically opposed phenomena. But in Buddhism, it seems, everything really comes together. The main meaning here is getting rid of suffering, which means achieving a certain blissful state of the absence of suffering and desires (nirvana).

But if you do not stop at the level of the so-called “first glance”, but still begin to “dig” deeper, then it becomes clear that all religions (and even those that are not among the world ones) strive, first of all, for the good for a person, to his own happiness and peace. The inheritance of God in Christianity and submission to Allah in Islam is only an indication of the ways to get rid of suffering, which is already accepted by Buddhism as the direct meaning of life. The essence of the religious meaning of life lies in the pursuit of good for a person, delivering him from suffering, in his own happiness. You just need to understand the relationship between this happiness and the path to achieving it, and then agree to follow this path.

What is the meaning of life? (modern view)

The authors of the online magazine site are well aware that today not everyone understands religious and philosophical statements so clearly, so we will also give an answer to this complex question, in slightly different words, using an example. So, what could be the meaning of your life:

• Enjoy the beauty of earthly blessings;
• Give life to another person (give birth and raise a child);
• To do something necessary and useful for the future of humanity;
• Feel human emotions (love, fear, hatred, happiness, joy, pride, etc.).
• Help other people.

In other words, each of us has a calling to fulfill.
It should be remembered that nothing on Earth happens for nothing, everything has its own hidden plan. Therefore, you should be able to enjoy any events and treat them condescendingly, even bad ones. Only when you realize that you live here and now, and only once, only then will you look at your existence with a diametrically opposite view. There is hardly a person on earth who would never think about the meaning of life

. The question of the purpose of each of us specifically arises in our minds with all seriousness, because it is connected with the need to make a decision about how to live. Our choice in this case has far-reaching consequences.

In modern society you can meet people with different understandings of what the meaning of human life

:

1. There are people who consider this kind of thinking utopian, and therefore prefer to simply “exist” because of their presence on Earth. Born means live...

2. Others, going through an endless number of options, look for something that could fill their life with meaning, and spend their whole lives on it.

3. Some, not finding what they are looking for, make a radical decision - to take their own life. Why is it needed if it has no meaning?

4. There are also those who declare that they have this very meaning and position themselves as happy people.

All the people we described have one thing in common: no one wants to waste their life and be deceived. The meaning of human life

is inextricably linked with the concepts of happiness, purpose in life, its purpose. An incorrectly chosen landmark ultimately leads a person to disappointment and the collapse of life.

What is the meaning of human life

Reflections on the purpose of man and his role in the Universe have been known since the advent of means of recording information. Naturally, reflections of this kind led the ancient philosophers to the question of what makes up a person. The bodily component was never questioned and aroused only anatomical interest, since everything with its needs is quite simple - breathe, eat, drink... The body does not need a special meaning or idea - it exists as biological matter. As for the intangible component of a person, everything is much more serious here.

What is the soul?

Let's look at the different understandings of the spiritual essence of man that have taken place throughout history.

"Material" soul

Aristotle said: “Some people are slaves, and others are free citizens because it is so ordained by nature... It is right and just that some should be ruled, and others should exercise the government for which they are naturally fit; and if so, the master’s power over the slave is also fair.”

In such a hierarchy everything was simple. Be who you were born to be - this is the place you should occupy. Something similar happened again in the 19th and 20th centuries. Nietzsche's philosophy of the superman, adopted by many minds, was refracted in the understanding of people in many different ways, leading to such things as the "purification of the nation" by Hitler, the "building of an ideal society" by the communists, etc.

Both in antiquity and in the teachings of Nietzsche, man was not considered as consisting of a spiritual principle and a body. The works of Darwin on the origin of species, which appeared in the 19th century, and the teachings of Marx and Engels on dialectical materialism jeopardized the very structure of the Universe and man as part of it.

Nietzsche declared the need to “kill God” to free man from prejudices and fears. Man has ceased to be the bearer of a moral soul. Materialism looked at man as a highly organized biological matter, and only matter…. As a result, everyone was given the place in which he would be most useful for the “public benefit.” And she, in turn, was the only measure of truth, with the formulation “the end justifies the means.” That is why Hitler’s death camps were considered a rational means of “cleansing the race.” For the same reason, in the USSR, the dissidents described by Solzhenitsyn were shot, exiled, or left to rot in prisons as elements harmful to society.

Soul of Desires

But the model of life described above did not suit everyone. There were thinkers who seriously recognized the existence of a human soul and reflected on its needs. Moments of morality, love and goodness are indeed quite difficult to describe in biological matter. The followers of Epicurus elevated pleasure to the rank of the highest good. They believed that a person would be happy when he had no suffering and gained equanimity of soul. In this concept, man is qualitatively different from what pure materialism proposes. He has a soul with claims to happiness and certain needs that must be satisfied.

It is necessary to note the philosophy of the East with a similar concept in understanding the soul. In this paradigm, the body becomes a burden to the soul, which has an unearthly nature and needs corresponding to this nature. An important point of this view is the eternity of the soul and its immateriality, but in a number of cases we are not talking about the soul returning to God, but about its reincarnation in the “next life” and continued existence in bodily form.

Empirical and Mystical Soul

This time, personal, intangible and sometimes inexplicable experience was at the forefront, which took the place of the measure of truth. The logic of this concept is simple: those who have not experienced it will not understand and have no moral right to evaluate what happened. This means that the possibility of general rules becomes incorrect. This state of affairs has led to a plurality of truths and opinions. Representatives of this direction of philosophy (Hobbes, Locke, etc.) set themselves the task of knowing nature or its subjugation through the experience acquired by each person separately. By the way, the development of this doctrine leads to pantheism - polytheism.

Divine soul

Another historical perspective on the soul is worth noting. It was expressed in a vivid form during the Middle Ages and partially during the Renaissance. The influence of the church and its laws became an integral part of every area of ​​life. The view of the spiritual essence of man was based on the Bible. This soul differs from the previous ones with a clear beginning, a definite goal, and is completely clearly describable.

Human soul:

1. Not material. 2. Created by God. 3. Eternal. 4. Man is responsible for right relationship with her Creator. 5. of this soul - the achievement of bliss found in the contemplation of God in the afterlife.

Ideal meaning of life

What parameters should the ideal meaning of life

, to which he could devote his whole life and not be disappointed? I came up with three simple criteria:

1. Ideal meaning of life

is timeless and should have value throughout life. It cannot be limited by a time frame and cannot be achieved at a certain stage of life. For short-term goals there is another name - a dream.

2. Ideal meaning of life

immaterial, it cannot have earthly, material value, since it will lose value when it is achieved.

3. Ideal meaning of life

feasible. Many people have faced disappointment at the end of their lives simply because they were carried away by an idea that in itself was unrealistic. A good example of this is communism, which was built by several countries. Millions of people were infected by this idea. Working two shifts, infringing on themselves for the sake of a bright future, exiling dissidents, they were ultimately left with nothing.

Where to look for the meaning of life?

Now let's summarize everything that was written above. Quite a lot of people are ready to exchange their lives for “soap bubbles”, fleeting illusions, without ever understanding why their soul came into this world.

Material condition, honor in society, power - all these are “soap bubbles”. Some people prefer to “forget themselves”, to escape from reality and the problems that arise in life - in the modern world there are enough means to stupefy the mind. Other people go through numerous ideas, wasting valuable time. Unfortunately, even universal human values ​​(for example, a good family) are not able to give a person a permanent and reliable meaning that fills his life.

Based on the criteria for the ideal meaning of life that I developed for myself, I came to the understanding that there are only two concepts that meet these criteria:

1) Death

No matter how paradoxical it may sound, death meets the stated requirements of the meaning of life. It is intangible, does not depend on the set deadlines for human activity, and it is feasible. Death as the inability to exist biologically. But can this be called meaning??? Of course not!!! Living for the sake of death is absurd. It is also important to understand that we are not here by choice - the process of our birth was planned by Someone other than us. This means that it is logical to assume that in search of our destiny, we should not be based on our ideas, but try to understand the structure of the world and our place in it. And we absolutely do not have the right to take our own lives, since our appearance and departure from life are not determined by us.

2) Existence after death

This meaning also meets the requirements described above. Only, unlike the first option, it really is a meaning that can give direction to one’s whole life. Determine her destiny, ultimate goal and give hope for eternal bliss. The meaning of life can only be found in God.

“Jesus said to him: I am the way and the truth and the life” (Bible, Gospel of John 14:6).

Talking about the afterlife makes many people smile. Such is the meaning of life

unacceptable for them too. After all, it questions their own worth and limits their freedom. Indeed, in order to accept Christ as his Savior, a person must admit his own weakness and entrust his destiny into the hands of the One who exists outside of earthly time and reveals what man needs, as his Creator.

It seems logical to us to study the operating instructions for the device compiled by its manufacturer. But for some reason the instructions of the Creator of people (the Bible) are ignored by many...

What is the true meaning of life

If you are thinking about the significance and value of life today, then try to answer yourself simple questions:

1.What is your soul, its needs and values? 2.What characteristics should your ideal meaning in life have? 3. By whose will are you on Earth today and discussing these issues? 4. If there is a God who created you, what is your place in His plan?

Such reflections led me to understand God. A personal God with whom one can have a relationship. The God who fills life with meaning, gives hope and fulfills His promises. He who created heaven and earth also created man. But the man sinned by neglecting the command of God, and further relationships became impossible. Jesus Christ came to Earth to solve this problem. He - a real historical figure - died on the cross to atone for the guilt of all people before their Creator. Your relationship with God can be improved by trusting in Christ as your personal Savior. And He will give you the meaning of life

earthly, and blissful eternity after death.

People began to think about why life was given to man and for what purpose each of us is born on this earth, probably around the time when they separated from nature and began to realize themselves as. At a time when Homo erectus

evolved into
Homo sapiens,
it was no longer enough for our ancestors to live solely to satisfy physiological needs, and it was people’s desire for something more that became the engine for the development of human civilization. However, despite the fact that philosophers and thinkers of all times have tried to find the meaning of human life, to this day an exact answer to the question of why a person lives has not been given.

Today, there are many theories based on philosophical and religious doctrines that try to explain why man exists. Psychologists, in turn, also do not stand aside and try to find their answer to the question of why people were given life. Let's consider the most famous theories about the meaning of life and try to find the answer to the question of why a person lives.

The concept of the meaning of life in the history of philosophy.

The meaning of life is a regulatory concept from the perspective of a person’s individual life. In answer to the question about the meaning of life in the history of philosophy, there are 4 options:

1. Selfish option

, when the meaning of life is aimed at individual and personal goals, for example: achieving nirvana in Buddhism, the epicurean desire for pleasure, and focusing on the acquisition of consumer goods in bourgeois society. Here a person focuses on himself, which inevitably separates him from other values ​​and, as a result, leads to pessimism and loss of the meaning of life. Schopenhauer emphasized this in his statement that more modern people live in dreams.

2. Altruistic

, when a person directs his life exclusively to external social values, and, as it were, forgets himself. For example: service to religion, politics, science, family, here the individual is seen as a means for realizing certain higher external values, but at the same time the meaning of life for him disappears.

3. Pessimistic

when a person’s existence, his life as a whole, has no meaning at all. For example: Schopenhauer argued that all “+” are not human values, they are only an acquired negative expression of value, i.e. not values. For example: health - absence of illness, love - absence of loneliness, etc. Youth is the absence of old age; no values ​​means no meaning. Theoretically, in the 20th century. argue that the values ​​that modern people place highly are just a way to hide from themselves the complete meaninglessness of human life: religion, money-grubbing, sex, alcohol, drugs, gambling, this is just a way to forget.

4. Optimistic option

: it is obvious that this option should imply meaningfulness - real life is not about simply living, passively moving with the flow of events, but about determining your destiny - living meaningfully, meaningfully, fully.

¶

Such existence is achieved when two conditions are met:

v Having specific, well-defined goals

, isolated in culture.
A soul that does not have a pre-established goal dooms itself to destruction, for he who is everywhere is nowhere (Michel Montaigne, 21st century France)
.
However, not every goal, even one achieved, will lead to the acquisition of meaning in life, as evidenced by such a phenomenon as a “crisis of success” - a person who suddenly achieved the goal he was striving for: money, success, position in society, all this causes depression of such a degree that people commit suicide. This indicates that the goal was chosen incorrectly, its achievement led to the collapse of the personality, therefore, the nature of the goal is important.
v Significance

goals. The goal itself must confirm the significance of the individual choosing it - his position in the culture relative to its values ​​and other people, i.e. people must, as it were, confirm the objective significance of a given individual; therefore, the more socioculturally significant the goals that an individual chooses, the greater the number of people who are actually and potentially invested in activities to achieve these goals, or vice versa.

The greater the number of people included in the life of a given individual, the more significant, fulfilling, and meaningful his existence is. In other words, a person, finding the meaning of life, must go through the world of other people or culture. Since these goals are personal and individual, and on the other hand, generally culturally significant, the meaning of a person’s life lies in self-realization, which is achievable only when included in the universality of culture, i.e. In order to achieve meaning in life, you need to create a real, universally significant goal and productively persistently act to achieve it.

If a person has grounds, reasons for a meaningful life, he will endure anything.

Friedrich Nietzsche.

¶

The concept of happiness.

The scientific understanding of the meaning of life is opposed to the everyday

, which sees the meaning of life, as well as the effect of its highest manifestations in the form of
happiness
, in achieving pleasures and enjoyments, in avoiding suffering, in experiencing comfort. The meaning of life cannot be happiness at all if happiness is considered as a goal; happiness is not a goal, but a result.

Happiness always presupposes the following conditions:

· extremely intense experience – delight, ecstasy.

· involuntary spontaneous experience - it is impossible to force yourself to be happy, just as it is impossible to force yourself to believe and love.

· extremely short-term experience.

Goethe claimed that in 84 years, he had 11 happy days. Happiness must have an objective basis. That is, happiness is the moment in which people confirm the generally valid value of goals. Goals are specified in a practical way to achieve them. So, happiness is not a goal, but a result

, which embodies the significance of the goal being achieved. If a person treats happiness as pleasure, he has become overly focused on his individuality. Objective reasons embodied in other people disappear, the result is not specified, and there is no happiness.

If a person applies even more efforts to achieve an individualistically conceived happiness, then a psychological excess of control arises, which, as is known from cybernetics, is dangerous and is fraught with a semantic breakdown

, depression and even suicide.

Thus, happiness is the result of the correct trajectory chosen by the individual, i.e. oriented towards the highest values ​​of culture in the world of other people.

¶

Existential vacuum.

An existential vacuum is a meaning-containing emptiness, a state when a person cannot extract meanings from culture and find the meaning of life. Since the meaning of life is physically necessary for a person, when it is lost or not achieved, a person finds himself in a state of crisis. Existential vacuum is the collective neurosis of our time, a psychological form of expression of the anthropological crisis of our time

.

An anthropological crisis is the loss of orientation in culture by a modern individual. It arises because modern culture, with its rapidly growing volume of material and spiritual values, exceeds in its scope the possibilities and methods of value orientations that an individual learned in the process of assimilating culture. For several millennia, these methods have been focused on the shortage of consumer goods, which was the meaning of life.

In the 20th century A consumer society arises, where shortages are actually eliminated, and if present, then artificially – the functioning of the market. The reproduction of a new culture with new spiritual values ​​and meanings is opening, but the entire previous development of humanity has not yet developed ways to assimilate these values ​​and transform them into individual meanings, because of this, apparently, a psychological crisis arises.

A huge number of people periodically or constantly experience feelings of melancholy, loneliness, loss of understanding, etc. - i.e. depression of varying intensity. Depression is self-aggression

,
which easily turns into external aggression - towards other people
. Hence the extremely emotional instability of modern man, unmotivated aggression. In the extreme, such behavior leads to the destruction of personality, and even physical death. The existential vacuum is individually softened by logotherapy in the person of psychologists and philosophers; the vacuum can be radically eliminated only through the radical elimination of the foundations of the anthropological crisis, this means the development of new technologies, upbringings and educations that would allow a person to assimilate culture adequately to its modern diversity.

¶

Ways out of the existential vacuum.

Finding the meaning of life through the assimilation of cultural values.

Assimilated values ​​become individual meanings, which provide meaningfulness to life, i.e. meaning. These values ​​cannot be released by chance, they must be selected expediently, distinguished from others; modern theorists distinguish 3 groups of such values:

1. The values ​​of creativity, when a person finds the meaning of life through the development, creation of new values ​​and introducing them into culture - these can be values ​​as generally significant activities on a large scale, for example: in science or politics; and small local scales, for example: in family home life, it is important that this choice is oriented towards the culture as a whole and is realized as the ultimate human effort.

2. Values ​​of experience, when a person acquires a new meaning in life not through the creation of new values, but through the experiences of those who are already in the culture. Here are the subgroups:

· Aesthetic values, i.e. experiencing the beauty and harmony of the world and nature.

· Values ​​of communication: with neighbors - friendship, with distant ones - solidarity.

· Love, which implies the fulfillment of three conditions:

v Uniqueness (portability).

v Transparency, i.e. the ability to see in another person those qualities that others do not see.

v Mirroring – when a loved one is capable of new qualities. This process of mutual mirror reflection is endless.

3. The value of attitude, when a person can find meaning in life even in a hopeless crisis situation, if he cannot create or experience productively (with a serious illness), then a person finds meaning through a humanly worthy attitude towards a situation that surpasses him in this sense, illness and even death can become valuable for a person. Illness helps a person to practice overcoming difficulties, and death reminds a person that he must hurry to realize his own potential.

¶

Love as a value.

Aesthetic values, in the strict sense of the word, love is one of the manifestations of communication, or rather, purely individual communication between two persons. Such concepts as love for the motherland, science, etc. also imply individual relationship and communication, which in a narrower sense is love as a relationship between two people. In an even narrower sense, the term love refers to individual sexual love. Love can be transferred to things, objects and phenomena, but only if they mean people. For example: love for the homeland is, firstly, love for compatriots, for specific compatriots.

The opposite of love is hatred, and therefore love as a phenomenon and concept is formed historically through overcoming disunity between people, as stronger and permanent connections are established, this means that first love is formed in a narrow communal framework within the limits of immediacy, i.e. communication with loved ones (compatriots, friends, relatives and children).

One of the forms of the formation of love in ancient times, as well as its individual forms, is social exogamy

. Individual selective love is a by-product of increased contacts.

New aspects of love arise in antiquity; the ancient Greeks understood love completely differently than modern Europeans. If for us love is to a certain extent a mystery, then the Greeks considered love as a kind of objective force like gravity and clearly divided it into 7 types:

1. Eros

– individual-sexual, passionate love reaching the point of madness.

2. Philia

- inclination, affection for children, parents, sciences, arts. Love is friendship, a spiritual and calm feeling that presupposes the moral improvement of lovers.

3. Agape

– sacrificial-pitying love, service, self-denial.

4. Storge

– love is the tenderness of long-term married people. The essence of this type of love is expressed in the myth, according to which ancient people were not divided by gender, they were androgynous: a ball rotating in 4 cardinal directions, not knowing the torments of love, these people arrive in bliss. People are divided into 2 types: 2 sexes that cannot exist without each other, and since then people are doomed to look for their soul mate.

5. Mania

– love obsession, madness from the gods, loss of sleep and appetite, confusion and heartache are the companions of this passion.

6. Ludus

striving for sensual pleasures, love is a game, devoid of deep feelings and allowing betrayal.

7. Pragma

– rational, easily amenable to conscious control, love of convenience.

In antiquity, the concept of “individual love” was first formed; this individuality was not defined by gender; for the Greek, the gender of the beloved being was indifferent, therefore forms of love that were abnormal in modern times were not considered abnormal among the Greeks. In the Middle Ages, in European Christian culture, love for those who are distant was first formed, i.e. formed beyond immediacy. All people are brothers in Christ. The price of such expansion in love was the suppression of individual sexual forms of love, which were regarded as a means of procreation.

In European culture, individual love receives rights only at the beginning of modern times, but it is formed as a union of two sexes, based on passionate love, through opposition to the old communal traditional forms, the legend of Romeo and Juliet. However, this individual union contains limited aspects: the family as a means of opposition to society.

As a market society develops, love takes on an increasingly individual character, i.e. becomes a union of two private individuals who pursue their individual interests at this time. Schopenhauer formulates the first history of philosophy and the history of the theory of love. According to Schopenhauer, love is essentially an illusion that the world's will experiences in order to prolong its existence. For people themselves, love does not actually give anything, it is a depletion of vitality and disappointment, in fact, it is madness. Therefore, so that a person does not receive his sight and, in his disappointment, does not refuse to continue the race, which means the death of the world will, she encloses in him a love attraction, reviving him in the form of a primitive passion and dressing him in the sublime clothes of pure love.

That love is a deception and an illusion is clear from the fact that marriages are made according to convenience without illusion, this is the most accurate and capable of education.

In fact, Schopenhauer betrays with a theoretical formula the form of love that appears to bourgeois culture.

In the Russian tradition, the theory of love was formulated by V. Soloviev (late 19th century). Unlike Schopenhauer, he argued that the meaning of love is not in reproduction, but in the unity of man with man, i.e. in culture there is a figurative relationship than in nature: the love of people is not connected with fertility, like in animals. The meaning of love is that only through love for another can a person gain the uniqueness of his personality, therefore the highest type of love is sexual love, it is chosen and individual, and therefore higher than friendship, motherhood, love of science and even love of humanity, for only individual love completes the formation of personality.

Individual love is higher than a marriage (everyday) and physiologically sexual union, although it is built on their basis: both unions are possible without love. Marriage without love is boredom, sex without love is pure physiology (bestiality), but also pure, i.e. exclusively spiritual platonic love is an anomaly, because it is priceless. As the crisis in modern culture continues to create an individual concept of love, in which the differentiation of Schopenhauer's theory develops, Freud emphasizes sexual emphasis in his concept of love:

1. Love is a product of libido, a person’s unconscious hostile craving for pleasure.

2. Jung's love, with the difference that Jung gives sociocultural shades to sex, Jung's student - Fromm - criticizes psychoanalysis not because it does not interpret love in a very human way, psychoanalysis interprets love as a manifestation of social instinct, the true relationship between love and sex - the opposite. The human sexual instinct is a manifestation of the need for love, first love, then sex, and not vice versa.

Fromm gives the most developed theory of love - individual love is not some isolated phenomenon in a person’s life, but one of the manifestations of skillfully living in the world of people. Love, according to Frome, is the way for a person to escape loneliness, a way to overcome the disunity of love. There are several ways out of loneliness and only one of them is truly human - this is love:

1. Pathological abilities to overcome loneliness: orgiastic madness, i.e. trance, detachment from the world through alcohol, drugs, sex. The outside world seems to disappear, and at the same time the feelings of distance from it, i.e. loneliness.

2. Conformism, i.e. adaptation of a person to existing conditions and adaptations, but this is fraught with the loss of personal individuality.

3. Overactivity (business person), Sunday syndrome.

4. Symbiosis is the mutual dependence of two individualists, i.e. for example sadists and masochists. Then people focus on each other to avoid loneliness.

5. Mature love is the only normal way for a person to overcome loneliness and find himself. Such love is achieved through a person’s positive attitude towards the world as a whole, through sympathy for all its manifestations - love for others, for nature, for the homeland, etc. Such love never comes to a person as a happy accident, it always arises as a result of his own internal efforts

.

A person must objectively realize himself in culture, become available in love from himself and others, and never wait for passive luck, which supposedly will give us a loved one.

Mature love consists of the following components:

· Brotherly love, the ability to empathize with all other people without consideration of any benefit, for example: the love for children that all people possess. Brotherly love implies love for near and far, solidarity, internationalism.

· Parental love: parents for children and children for parents. Both of these formulas are different because the child loves the parents differently than they love him. Children's love is more consumptive; only after 8-12 years of age does a child gradually begin to understand that parents need to give their love. In addition, parental love is divided into maternal (unconditional, forgiving) and paternal (demanding, imperative, the father may not forgive), erotic love (individual sexual love, which is directed at another person and requires complete fusion with him).

True love is easy to confuse with falling in love, but if falling in love is short-lived, and it seems to feed on the energy of recognizing another person and disappears when a habit appears, then true love only grows, because through love for another, a person comes to know himself.

Self-love is knowing oneself through love for the world, other people, a loved one, this is not selfishness, since selfishness is only a surrogate for self-love, because selfishness in the long run leads to the loss of contact with other people, which can confirm a person’s importance.

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The meaning of life from the point of view of philosophy and religion

The greatest philosophers and thinkers of the past did not shy away from global issues, therefore, over several thousand years of development of human civilization, many theories about the meaning of life have been formed. The founders of these theories were both the greatest minds of bygone times and entire philosophical schools, and some of the most famous theories overlap with each other, while others are completely opposite. And of the many philosophical doctrines that try to explain the meaning of human life, the most famous are the following:

Not only philosophers and thinkers, but also the founders and ministers of various religious cults, ranging from less common beliefs to world religions, tried to find answers to questions about the meaning of life. However, if philosophers considered their conclusions to be nothing more than theories, then the unconditional truth and steadfastness of the teaching is a fundamental dogma that cannot be questioned.

Christianity

teaches that life was given to man so that, by truly believing, following God’s commandments and leading a godly lifestyle, he would earn a place in heaven after death.
Islam
claims that the meaning of life is to surrender oneself to Allah and worship him.
Buddhism, like Hinduism
, insist that a person is born in order to achieve a state of enlightenment and supreme bliss in one way or another (through good deeds, self-development, self-knowledge, austerities, etc.).

The view of modern psychologists on why a person lives

Of course, in our time there are quite a lot of people who are confident that the meaning of their lives lies in serving God and in strict adherence to religious laws and dogmas. However, most states are very small, and ordinary people look for the meaning of life not in philosophical and religious teachings, but in themselves - in their soul, thoughts, feelings and desires.

And more and more people who have failed to find the true meaning of their lives or have become disillusioned with their own goals and aspirations are turning to psychologists to help them regain interest in life. According to psychologists, people lose the meaning of life only if they initially incorrectly determined what they were living for and considered any of the long-term goals to be their highest purpose. Therefore, experts on human souls know exactly what cannot be the meaning of life. In their opinion, those people who are sure that life is given to man are mistaken in order to:

But why was life given to a person, if not to have children, earn money or achieve career heights? More and more modern psychologists believe that there is no single meaning in life for all people, since each person is an individual with his own priorities and desires. Therefore, the meaning of a person’s life is to live in harmony with oneself, achieve one’s goals step by step, discover new horizons and develop.

That is, instead of looking for the global meaning of life, you just need to live in such a way as to enjoy every day you live and not waste time. Our life is finite, and only by realizing our goals will we be able to live it in such a way as not to regret the lost years and opportunities in old age.

What is the meaning of human life

A question that people have been trying to answer since time immemorial. More often it occurs at a time of failure and bad mood and does not have a clear universal answer that would satisfy everyone.

Each person has his own meaning in life. For some it lies in children. For others - in creativity, serving other people. And for some it consists of little things that make life happy and joyful.

Much depends on what stage of life a person is at, what he looks like at the moment, young or old, happy or not.

We try so often to understand and find the answer that we forget that the meaning of life lies within ourselves. To understand the meaning of your own life, you just need to look inside yourself and understand what is most precious and important. Determine what makes everyday life joyful and happy. The bustle, the fast pace of life, the race of thoughts do not help you find the right answer.