What are you living for?

[blazeofglory]

Maybe for eating the food of your choice? Maybe loving for marrying the girl or the boy of your dream? You might have many ends, some go fulfilled and others go unattained.

Life is so short-lived and we feel we have not enough of it. We want to live longer, for we have spent most of our life on earning. But we know that the amount of life we have is more than we can enjoy, for it is not the length of life we aspire to, it is the quality of life that matters at the end of the day.

If we live just for ourselves life becomes an island.

John Donne wrote so beautifully. It still rings inside me:

Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

All of us in togetherness, not in isolation become ourselves, and find the meaning of being in this vast universe. Not only our friends but even our adversaries equitably chip in presenting us the way we are.

Imagine how could I write or what drives me to write these words from a world far from yours. English is not my mother tongue yet the desire of coming across you motivates me to learn it and speak to you to my heart's contentment.

That is what I am living for?

What are you living for?

[cafolini]

I agree with almost every word you said, and the differences will simply be my choice of words. If we are to achieve contentments, we must live for each other in the government of the people, by the people and for the people. Thanks for sharing this post.

[cacian]

I am living on this earth to learn something and give something back as well as take something with me to another world.
I am grateful to be born and I never lose sight of that.
So to live is to do things and say things in a way that I never thought I would. Living is a cycle and so the more I gain in time, or age, the more I see that I have indeed changed greatly and for the better. Things that I never thought I would when I was a certain that I get to do now is worth living for.
So life is just an excuse to do something that I would not have done otherwise had not been alive and therefore it is worth every minute of it.

[TenderButtons]

I don't know. Can someone decide for me?

[SFG75]

Existence precedes essence.....all you need to know.

[Irishcrusader95]

i am living for life. the fact of our mortality is something we try to brush off as we try t convince ourselves that death is a long way off for us when it may not be. we are all living on borrowed time and sooner or later must pass from this world just as everyone has before us and will after us. so live for each day, never stop aspiring to do all the things you want to do and experience. i want to learn all i can about about as much as i can, i want to travel the world and see all its beauties, i want to fall in love and most of all i want to end my life knowing that i made some impact on the people i met and to go with a glad heart.

[krishna_lit]

I don't know. Can someone decide for me?

Many people really want to decide others' life, but no one CAN decide others' lives.. That is the real beauty of it, ain't it?

I am living my life standing on something that I truly believe: Righteousness, Mutual Happiness, Passion, Dreams, and removing the curtain of conventions that we reluctantly or unconsciously put on our own minds... I lead my life in search of not what is truth but for something beyond that, for an everlasting and kick-*** feeling of an achievement that I always wanted to accomplish. I want my Spark to never fickle and so I'm gaurding it with not my hands but with my heart.

[blazeofglory]

Living for fulfillment alone does not give us the taste of life, for we never can live alone, for we are directly or indirectly depending on one another in this universe. That is why we cohabit, co-create or cooperate to make our ends meet.

That is why we must do something for others so that others too will do something for us.

Today we are more into individualism and selfcenteredness. We want to occupy space for ourselves and there is no end of our greed and selfish passion. When we grow in our civilization we exploit and exhaust some of the most vital elements that sustain our life and of the rest of our beings.

Our luxuries have no end and even if we empty the earth of its great resources like plants and animals and the ocean of its riches we will still not satisfy our greed.

Let us learn to be sensible and live for others too.

[loe]

Nobody really had the choice of being born, so why bother (and see it as a gift under all circumstances)?

I'm just here, that's enough.
I try to spend the time I have in a rather comfortable way. I respect a miminum of social responsibility (not to harm others or limit their own options with my actions etc.), but in general I like being a peaceful island. :)

[cafolini]

Nobody really had the choice of being born, so why bother (and see it as a gift under all circumstances)?

I'm just here, that's enough.
I try to spend the time I have in a rather comfortable way. I respect a miminum of social responsibility (not to harm others or limit their own options with my actions etc.), but in general I like being a peaceful island. :)


Not a bad idea/:thumbs_up
But there is a tacit proposition in what you intend to do. What do you do with others that actually want to limit your own options? You need an option to be able to apply your propositions. You need democracy.

[loe]

Yes, you are right.
I know it's quite an idealistic point of view and I'm not completely able to execute this way of living in reality. Not only because of others also because of some limitations of the "system" - e.g. I spend more time at work than I would like to, but the necessitiy of money to survive forces me... *sigh* (at least I'm not working very hard there ;) ).

Some years ago I made the experience that things in life that really matter and could hurt are extremely rare. So I decided to turn to a very fatalistic point of view: (nearly) nothing really matters, so why bother (sooner or later I'll be dead anyway).

I'm exaggerating a bit, but I guess you know what I wanted to say.
I know that we have to make (hopefully democratic) compromises with others and although I'm not very fond of my work I'm also against pure parasitism (in my previous post I mentioned the minimum of social responsibility).

Sorry, for digressing from the thread's question...

[Volya]

Why does one need something to live for? Life is beautiful on its own without reason.

[caddy_caddy]

Hi Haribol,
Unfortunately, my dear friend
"The only reason for living is to stay dead for a long time --Faulkner"

[STX360]

life is not something that begins or ends. its just shallow understanding if we think that it starts with our birth and ends with death.
its in fact something like a current. it goes on, taking different forms and meanings, but even death is nothing but a change of form and and attempt to go on living. it's not about fantasies like afterlife and heaven and such delusions. its simply the fact that being human is one form of life, while being a mass of rotting meat is also another form of being. its always going on.

[Ser Nevarc]

Love (and its prinicple avatar ART)

[Raaksha]

Life just happened, it's not like I chose it, so why would I have a genuine reason for it? But Donne's ideas are beautiful in the sense that concocting such a 'reason' for life for oneself is more conducive in terms of human progress on earth.
Personally, why do I live? I'd say because I'm not dead yet. I don't have a deathwish and I do enjoy life, but then I don't fear or shrink from death either.

I don't mean to digress (brace yourself for the irrelevant), but this just reminded me of an interesting topic for discussion - the modern human's fear of mortality. We cherish life so much that we have such a gripping aversion towards death - a fear that Gandhi claimed was absent in our ancestors as he felt they didn't cling onto life the way we do.

"Though we are eaten up of lice and worms,
And though continually we bear about us
A rotten and dead body, we delight
To hide it in rich tissue; all our fear,
Nay all our terror, is, lest our physician
Should put us in the ground, to be made sweet."
(Bosola, from Webster's The Duchess of Malfi)