What is your purpose in life?

This is a fundamental question that I had struggled with for quite some time. It is an unsettling feeling to not have a clear answer, to not know exactly why it is worth getting out of bed each and every morning. But my search for a monolithic answer to ease the existential angst bubbling up inside of me honestly led me nowhere. In fact, I would say that this quest to define my sole purpose in life had led me astray from the very qualities that make humans human.

We are not cogs in a deterministic machine. To say we were meant for one thing in life is to do a great injustice to the evolution of human consciousness. Unlike a chair that is meant to be sat upon, we have the capacity to define ourselves for ourselves. And in the course of our short lifetimes, we evolve through different iterations of ourselves several times over. Who is to say that the person I am now wants the same things as the person I will eventually be?

The beauty of human existence comes with its intricate complexities and uncertainties - to pass up on that experience by latching onto a single sense of purpose would be a terrible shame.

So what is my purpose in life? Honestly, I think it’s a throwaway question that really has no answer. And even if it did, I’m not sure if I would really want to know. After all, there are so many paths in life to take. I’d like the freedom to be able to walk down more than one.