Ask HN: What is your purpose in life?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=784048

by rogerthat • 17 years ago

14 17 17 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I long ago gave up trying to find external purpose in life.

Instead my foremost goal is to be the best father and husband that I can be.

To guide my kids as best I can.

To show my family and friends that I'm there for them whenever they need me.

To do my best to live up to the potential I have but not to beat myself up for not being the next Craig Newmark,

Most of all to try to stay positive in a world that provides so many opportunities for me to make myself miserable.

"I cant change the world but I can change the world in me" - Bono

And, finally, to keep learning as much as I can with the help of great coworkers, friends, my family and trememdous online communities like HN and StackOverflow.

So that's me, pretty much. Where do you find your purpose?

p01nd3xt3r• 17 years ago

I find purpose in the products that I make and how they impact the people / world around me.

DanielStraight• 17 years ago

Being better than I was yesterday.

rogerthat3• 17 years ago

What does "better" mean for you (if you don't mind me asking)?

redorb• 17 years ago

I think if I really ever compared day over day / and really did it daily - I would go insane from the ups and down ..

I prefer month/month and actually more quarters or years How much better can you actually get in 1 day? I made the decision to quit smoking in a day; but it wasn't apparently "worth it" for months.

Ras_• 17 years ago

To build communities. Creating or contributing to something to be shared with others.

I've noticed that I am happiest when I can do something for the common good (=give). More than I could ever be by just concentrating on myself. Giving away some of the excess of anything creates more value than keeping it all to myself. Less having, more being.

rasyadi• 17 years ago

Life is an investment for the purpose of life after death.

rjprins2• 17 years ago

What is the purpose of life after death?

rogerthat3• 17 years ago

So no life after death would mean low ROI.

kirubakaran• 17 years ago

Love^. Adventure. Creation~. Childish silliness.

^ Includes friendship affection etc too

~ Art, Work etc

sdave• 17 years ago

this is the ultimate question my friend ! what is anybody's reason for living (purpose of life) ?

i read an interesting book on the same theme: siddhartha(herman hesse)

"I long ago gave up trying to find external purpose in life." this is golden . thanks.

rjprins2• 17 years ago

There is no purpose in life obviously, so you have to make something up:

I chose enjoying life (hedonistic) and being successful in my field (AI).

Strangely I don't feel like helping others, even though I know I should. May be it's because I'm having enough trouble helping myself..

ianso• 17 years ago

Two purposes, one wide and less important, and one narrow and highly important.

Wide/A: networks create communication creates understanding creates empathy, respect and love, hence why I want to work on Internet stuff.

Wide/B: faster, more disruptive change happens by empowering smaller (leaner/more agile) groups to effect that change. Utility computing should enable Joe Blogs to scale his world-changing idea from 1 person to thousands, hence why I want to work on cloud stuff.

Narrow: the world is a difficult place, and life is a struggle, and we're all in it together. The most we can do every day is to TRY and love each other as we love ourselves, especially your kids, your SO, your friends, etc.

This is damn hard and I fail every day.

Now, why is the wide less important than the narrow?

Because hundreds of other people are doing the wide stuff, and as one person, all I can do is provide a tiny push in the right direction.

Because technology is value-neutral. The above is how I see the potential for good, but the bad will be there too, maybe in the majority. But I have no control over that, like we have no control over spam.

The narrow stuff will stay with you for the rest of your life, and form, to a much deeper extent, who you really are as a person, and how much better the world will be when you leave it.

rogerthat3• 17 years ago

Well said.

mannicken• 17 years ago

We can only talk about tool's purpose or at least a purpose of something that has end. So by that, purpose of human life is death, and there is no greater purpose other than beauty, everlasting dance of matter and energy.

So live in the moment, that's all you ever get and don't worry about stuff you can't control.

kloc• 17 years ago

I once read..."The ultimate purpose of life which is to keep alive is impossibe" ... so why bother??

bhousel• 17 years ago

My purpose is to leave things in better shape than when I arrived at them. By "things", I mean anything: a job, a person, the world, etc.

iterationx• 17 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justification_(theology)

Ask HN: What is your purpose in life?

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