I'm writing this to you because, although neither of you are thinking about this question yet, it is on my mind at the moment. And one day you will think about it, I hope, and then you will have this.
Recently I realised that smarter people than me think that this question has no answer. I think it has, and I feel that it's important. So this letter isn't just for you. It's for anyone who needs it.
When I first asked the question, "What is the purpose of my life?" the answer I was given was, "To perform the will of God." (And when I asked "What does God want me to do?" I was told, "If you listen, He will tell you.")
I have learned a few important things since then:
Firstly, the kind of god that can have a will is not a real thing. Sure, if you define "God" as "the nature of reality" or as Tim Attwell, my friend Arthur's dad, does, "the process by which the future becomes the present", then those exist. But neither of those have a will and a purpose for your life.
(Secondly, when people say that God told them something, sometimes they're just lying, but often they genuinely believe it. The Bible includes a famous phrase; God speaks in "a still small voice." (1 Kings 19:12) It's not God. It's just ourselves, which explains why God appears to tell shitty people to do shitty things, and tell good people to do good things.)
Thirdly, this doesn't mean that your life has no purpose. It just means that its purpose doesn't come from a god. You can either allow other people to give it purpose.—For example, they could tell you that the purpose of your life is to perform the will of God, and in the next breath they could tell you what God wants you to do. That happens a lot. Or they could assign you the purpose of consuming products. Or shooting their enemies. Those also happen a lot.—Or you can develop a purpose yourself.
I chose the word "develop" carefully, because it means "create", but it's not a once-off thing. It's a process that doesn't have an end. One of my favourite quotes is by Maya Angelou: "Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better." This is how you develop the purpose for your life.
All animals are born with an instinctual purpose: Ensure the best chances for our own survival at least until we reproduce. Many mammals take that a bit further: After we reproduce, ensure the best chances for the survival of our offspring until they reproduce. We don't have to think about that purpose; it's built into us.
But we can do better. There is something special about us: David Chalmers, a philosopher, expressed it as, "There is something it is like to be us." You can imagine what it's like to be someone else, but you can't imagine what it's like to be a toaster. A toaster is some wire and a switch. A computer is a lot of wire and a lot of switches. A human is a computer made out of meat ... but there is something else that makes all the difference: A human can experience. Toasters and computers can't experience. It's not like something to be a computer. But it is like something to be you ... and me ... and everyone.
That is the first part. There is more: There is an experience, or an aspect of our consciousness, that we all have in common. It is considered the most valuable aspect of us. It has different names: One of them is "Light"; another is "Love". I'm not a fan of calling it "Love" because it's not only that, and I wouldn't want to limit it to that. But if we look inward, we can find it in ourselves, and we can find it in everyone else as well.
I believe it's this that gives us meaning, or significance, or value. This is what makes us more than a meat computer, and more than a meat computer with experiences.
A horse is a meat computer with experiences. But its value, at least in present-day thinking, is given to it by a human. A horse is only important if it's important to someone. Otherwise its value is expressed in terms of dog food.
But "Light" gives us our own value. We have our own meaning, which doesn't rely on meaning given to us by someone else.
I believe that this is the foundation on which we build our purpose.
So what should that purpose be?
Well, that's up to you. You get to develop your own purpose.
If it's helpful, here is how I currently think about mine. Imagine a parent (we'll call them "Ay") changing the nappy of their child (we'll call them "Bee"). We could see Ay's act of changing Bee's nappy as an outcome of Love.
But there are things other than Love that can have the same outcome. Imagine Ay and Bee are not a parent and a child. Imagine Ay is motivated by a sense of duty. Or imagine Ay is a professional caregiver, and they are paid to change Bee's nappy. Does that make the outcome less valuable?
No. In fact I would think of being motivated by a sense of duty as "Social-" or "Societal Light". And I would think of being motivated by a job as "Systemic Light". They each feel different, but they have the same outcome at different scales.
I would like my purpose to be based on Light at each scale.
Lastly, why is this important at all? What does it matter if we have a purpose or not?
It turns out, it matters to us. People who feel they have a purpose, live longer. They feel more fulfilled. Their lives feel worth living.
You are my children. I would not want anything less for you.
Love,
Dad
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
