What Are You Living For

Life is not a default condition, death is.

You have no choice about being born but once you are an adult your continued existence depends on what you choose and do. If you do nothing to sustain your own life, unless someone else hooks you up to some machines, returning you to your pre-adult state, you will die.

Like it or not, the ultimate choice is always, “to be or not to be.” If one does not choose to be, and makes no effort to sustain their own life, death is assured. The question is never about suicide, “why die?” The question that must be answered is, “why live?“

Most people mistake a fear of death for a love of life. Their only reason for laboring to stay alive is because the are terrified of dying. Why they fear death is a bit of a mystery. Before they were born they were not living and there was nothing painful or terrifying about it. Before birth and after death are exactly the same, you simply do not exist. Fear of death is nothing but a superstitious fear, like the fear of dragons or ghosts.

Unless one guides their life by whim, one makes their choices based on some objective or purpose they believe their choices will achieve. Since to live means one must choose to live, unless you are one of those who chooses to live only to evade death, you must have an answer to the question, “what is your objective or purpose in pursuing your life?” In other words, “what are you living for?”

What Is Your Life?

You life consists of what you do, not what happens to you. Things happen to a rock. The difference between a non-living entity and a living organism is that an organism’s living behavior is what makes it the organism it is. The moment that living behavior ceases, the organism ceases to exist as an organism and becomes just another non-living entity.

What you are, the kind of being you are, is also determined by what you choose and do. Your life is yours to make of it whatever you choose, but you will not choose anything if you do not aspire to anything. If you have no desire to achieve anything or ambition to accomplish anything. If you don’t want to be the best you can be in all things and make yourself all you possibly can, you won’t.

It’s Your Life

There is no duty or obligation to do anything with your life, and most don’t do much with their lives. If your own life is not worth doing everything in your power to be all you can be, there really is not much point in living. You can just be another of the mass of ignorant humanity complaining about there being no purpose to your life. “What is it all about?” “What is the purpose of my life?” “What is my identity?” They spend their lives and their time seeking answers from their philosophers, psychologists, and academic authorities, when the answer is, “your purpose has to come from you.” No one else can tell you what the purpose of your life is, you have to decide what you want to live for, and what there is for you that makes your life worth living.

What it is all about is living your life as well as you possibly can as a human being. The purpose of your life is whatever you have chosen to pursue and accomplish. Your identity is the person you have made of yourself, whatever your profession or work is.

What are you living for?

—(09/24/2020)