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Why do we live?

There is no reason for life. However, the human mind is biased toward always seeking a purpose to things, trying to understand the world by inventing chains of consequences. It is mentally uncomfortable to realize that life has no reason, but it is not a justification for making one up.

On the contrary, there is a freedom—and therefore a responsibility—in the way one lives one’s life, a freedom even greater when one is privileged by providence in terms of personal gifts and favorable social circumstances.

The right question to ask is therefore not why I live, but what I do with my life?In Stoic terms, this can be expressed as follows: one does not choose one’s fate, but one chooses how to face it.

Social ambition is not a satisfactory answer.

The most frequent mistake is to not work through the question of what to do with one’s life, and to answer it simply by following our instinct toward social ambition (see the question 'What is a human being?'). The materialization of social success often takes the form of one or several of the three vain desires mentioned by Epicurus: money, power, and honor.This approach actually works quite poorly, first because, as Epicurus noted, these pleasures can never be fully satisfied—there is always a desire for more. Secondly, the pursuit of these desires leads to a failure to master the two negative instincts inherited from our genetics.First, social ambition leads to the intense practice of generalized nepotism, which fosters social violence. Even a successful individual then lives in an environment of stress and frustration caused by the constant threat inherent in the instability of alliance-based relationships. This is the warning Buddhism gives when it encourages liberation from the ego.Secondly, social ambition combined with Epicurus’ vain desires leads to an intensification of cognitive dissonance resolved by self-deception and the uncritical adoption of the beliefs of the social groups one seeks to belong to. The result is a growing detachment from reality and glaring contradictions that progressively trap the individual in denial and inner discomfort.

Explore further

See the questions 'What is a human being?', then 'How to succeed in life?' and 'What should one do to be a good person?'