why

[donegal]

what is life all about

[paulhy4]

cos its fun and you can get drunk at weekends.cheer up mate

[Scarlets]

i spent ages thinking about this, and i had a headache and was close to going a bit mad.

it's awesome isnt it.

if you think about the universe its the same thing. scentists now think the universe (and thus life) is shrinking. But for it to shrink it has to be comparable in size to something else. So what's outside the universe? another one? a bigger one? a vaccum? a sausage roll?

It's one of those questions that is fun but I find it too stupendously impossible to answer.

I got told by a friend, that we should regard the universe, life and its contents as if we are a dog or a beetle or a mollusc and a human is talking to us. Its something that is there but impossible to understand.

[mattvanduck]

ditto, we get layed, get drunk, go to work, have holiday get drunk, get old, cant get it up......ooooo i dont wanna get old, but i can still get drunk! wahey

[Englishbird]

LoL at paulhy4's answer.

This week my life is all about finding my missing cat, last week it was about remembering a friend, the week before that it was about sh*gging someone i shouldn't have. 

Thinking outside the box doesn't do us many favours in the long run.  I've gone full circle.

Now where's that darn cat ...........

[natalie_1982]

Life is what you make it, cat or not cat, alcohol or no alcohol.  You have to take what life throws at you, cry, grizzle, whinge and shout at the time, then step back see it for what it is and move on.  I agree with Paul.  Cheer up!

Oh, and it's Friday tomorrow which is one reason to be cheerful.

And my last (and only) pearl of wisom - you could be worse off, it may not seem like it now though.

[JOEYSHABADO]

The world is an illussion. Another, more advanced civilization has developed a computer simulaiton of a "world". The answerbank is part of that code, the characters here are all invented, as are their answers. Everything you have done is a simulation being run on the hardware, the hardware being the only object which could really be described as 'you'.
This is not information normally provided to you, it's being done as a favour and to see if you can break out. If you can break the code, and see the cracks, then you may become independent of the code.
Best of luck.

[Scarlets]

I hope you find your cat Englishbird.

[grahamglos]

Just to correct you Scarlets, the universe is getting bigger :-P  This is due to blue shift being seen (violet light being refracted through the atmosphere less and less so the white light is diffracted in a way violet rays strike on the Earth.) If the universe was getting smaller, we would see red shift from the outer planets, but we don't, we see blue shift! ;-)

[magicdice]

we see red shift actually. blue shift would be if the distance between us and an observable star was decreasing i.e. it is moving towards us. but it's not, hence red shift

life's all about making yourself happy. nothing else matters in the end

[JOEYSHABADO]

Magic, then you die. What was the point in all that happiness then?
Lots of people live in so much pain that their lives are unhappy. Are their lives pointless?

[ll_billym]

It varies from day to day.

[JohnDTC]

having given it some quite lengthy thought over the years ive come to the conclusion it isnt worth thinking, or at least worrying about. you could spend your whole life pondering the reason & then die to find out, or as the case maybe not find out, that there is/isnt any point to it. if the whole existence of everything is simply an absurd meaningless fluke then why should you care -because there is nothing you can do about it. perhaps the whole reason is to just exist, a raison d'etre.

rationally speaking -assuming you dont buy into hugely flawed organised religious hocus-pocus -(in terms of historical evidence etc. not neccessarily sentiment) it is virtually impossible to conceive of the actual ultimate truth of the universe/life. human understanding of physics, the universe, many possibly infinate hidden truths, is severly limited in the grand scheme of things, so just as there is no real evidence of a greater truth it would be equally narrow minded to dismiss out of hand the possibilty of there being some point to existence, it could just be so intangible we will not ever realise it. this is quote from shakespeare (hamlet) i remember from school that i think is quite relevant in that sense;

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy

[Octavius]

You know, you come from nothing, you're going back to nothing.  What have you lost?  Nothing!

Always look on the bright side of life......

[El D]

whatever you want - isnt that cool?

In some ways considering this question annoys - I have a distinct god complex and am perturbed that I will eventually die knowing so little and with so many questions. On the other hand if you expand your mind and see yourself as part of some huge cycle where millions of living things pass away and are born every day all over the planet it brings a form of inner peace. I do not believe that life has any other purpose than to exist, but personally to satisfy my curiosity would be a start. And have a blast along the way :)

[mfewell]

Read chapters 3 and 4 of St. John's Gospel in a decent modern translation (e.g. NIV). It will take you about 10 minutes - and see 4:14 - there might just be something in it .....?