What I Have Lived For
Do you set the question to yourself why you are living? I think everyone in the world have lived for something because we are human, not machine. Like Bertrand Russell, in his article “What I Have Lived For,” the love, the knowledge and the suffering human are things that he have lived for. That’s things the author have to seek in the life. The desire for love that’s one of reasons that the author live for because it gives feeling of extreme happiness and reduces loneliness. And the love make author see wonderful things that just have in fairy tales. Next, the knowledge is another reason. The author still want to learn and know a lot of things what she don’t understand such as hearts of men, stars shine and Pythagorean power. In addition, feeling of sympathy for mankind is also a passion to live. She can’t suffer the hurt if someone in family can’t live a genuine life. To me, I also have lived for 3 simple passions : the love from my family , the mystery of life, the traveling because these passions always make my live for an enjoyable, and I’m as true to myself with it.
Love is the most importance passion of the author in the article. Why did Russell claim that the first of his passion is love? Love is represented for everything in this world. Love is the most common thing of human in the whole world. According to Russell’s article, “I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy - ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy.” Russell claims that love made him so happy and warms his heart every day. Love also brings him to see wonderful things that he thought that he can just see it in fairy tales. Unlike me, Love is my motivation all the time...
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...de because I remember my poor family in the past so I understand their pain and feeling. When I saw how they were happy to have books, my heart hurt so much. It’s exactly feeling that Russell said in his article that “Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart.” Moreover, I also wish that I will travel around the world. I want to know more the different cultures in the world. If I have chance to travel to the poor countries, I really want to help them and share to them all my passions and happiness.
These simple things around us, but maybe the strong passions what I have lived for. I have a life and we have been living for love-the source of happiness, the knowledge, and the empathy and surfing o humankind. Passions are motivations to continue to live in this world. Everyone have different passions, but we have the same goal that is a happy life.
Life, such a broad yet concise topic. A multitude of different people and cultures offer different opinions on what gives life value and how to obtain satisfaction in our lives. For example, the typical “American Dream” is defined as attaining wealth and success through hard work, while many Spanish cultures consider closeness within a family a valuable trait in life. Whether it is family, success, love, or faith, every citizen in each different culture finds what brings him or her joy and does whatever it takes to reach this satisfaction. There are three specific aspects of my life which make life worth living; these include my faith, my family, and the talents I have been blessed with.
"People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive...." Joseph Campbell made this comment on the search for meaning common to every man's life. His statement implies that what we seem bent on finding is that higher spark for which we would all be willing to live or die; we look for some key equation through which we might tie all of the experiences of our life and feel the satisfaction of action toward a goal, rather than the emptiness which sometimes consumes the activities of our existence. He states, however, that we will never find some great pure meaning behind everything, because there is none. What there is to be found, however, is the life itself. We seek to find meaning so that emptiness will not pervade our every thought, our every deed, with the coldness of reality as the unemotional eye chooses to see it. Without color, without joy, without future, reality untouched by hope is an icy thing to view; we have no desire to see it that way. We forget, however, that the higher meaning might be found in existence itself. The joy of life and the experience of living are what make up true meaning, as the swirl of atoms guided by chaotic chance in which we find our existence has no meaning outside itself.
“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson-
I believe that the very purpose of our life is to seek happiness. Whether one believes in religion or not, whether one believes in this religion or that religion, we all are seeking something better in life. So, I think, the very motion of our life is towards happiness (Dalai Lama & Cutler, 1998, p. 15).
What is the purpose of life? This is a question that has been argued since the beginning of time. Countless honorable and wise men have pondered and made conclusions about what our true purpose is in life. Aristotle and al’Ghazili are two philosophers that studied this purpose of life for almost all of their human existence. Their two proposals about the purpose of life and the ethics that are required to accomplish this purpose share some common ideas, while also having serious contrasts.
According to dictionary.com, “any powerful or compelling emotion or feeling” constitutes something as a passion. Passions can be either positive or negative. In my life, my passions influence my actions and my goals for the future. My goals have been a part of my life since I can remember and there are certain personality traits and motivators of mine that push me to accomplish these goals. My passions have originated from events I have gone through and realizations that I have come to. These huge motivators in my life include my desire for happiness, my determination to succeed, and my desire to help others.
Too often, we become too caught up in our everyday mundane routines that we forget, or perhaps, never truly see what our purpose is. We forget what truly motivates us to live and what truly drives us to reach a greater goal. Oscar Wilde once said, “To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.” As I look at the people around me, I see ones who furnish their goals with intents of gaining wealth, success, or recognition. However, are they truly happy? How many times have you actually sat down and asked yourself, “why do I do what I do?”.
For majority of life I’ve gone through the motions and have done as I have been told to do. Naïve and ignorant to how amazing life really is and refusing to question how things work or what my true purpose is other then surviving. For centuries there have been numerous philosophers to question what our purpose is and have developed different theories to help us get as close as we possibly can to finding the meaning of life. One thing I’ve learned since opening my eyes to the reality of the world is that in our lifetime the closest thing we will have is theories and ideas but we will never know the true meaning of life.
“Life is a balanced system of learning, adjusting, and evolving. Whether pleasure or pain; every situation in your life serves a purpose. It is up to us to recognize what that purpose could be.” - Dr. Steve Maraboli
us to nurture life, to love life, and to live it. Let's do our best.
My strong interests in music, good food, and the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom may seem broad, but they are the essentials for my aspiration in life. These passions are the incentives of how to be a happier and more successful person for me to become.
Everyone has their own outlook on life. Most people feel like money and success brings them happiness, while others think love is all they need. “For no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul” (Epicurus). Our philosophies change over time as we grow older and wiser. As a child I thought the world was full of so much happiness, love, peace and joy. Once I grew older my philosophy became clear that there is more to life than just living. In the world today it is best to have something that makes you look forward to the next day. Like family, friends, and personal goals. Being able to have overall balance of happiness, pain and the existence of God, is my guide for living.
quote: "For the secret of man's being is not only to live... but to live for something
Have you ever wondered, what is the purpose of our life? What do we truly exist for? Socrates, the ancient Greek philosopher did just that, he believed that the unexamined life is not worth living. Quite the
The meaning of life, defined by Victor E. Frankl, is the will to find your meaning in life. It is not the meaning of life in general, but rather the specific meaning of a person’s life at a given moment. He believes that if you are approached with the question of “what is the meaning of my life” or in this case, “life is meaningless,” then you should reverse the question to that person asking the question. For example: What are you bringing to me? What are you as an individual contributing to this life? This forces the person in question to take a look at themselves and to ultimately be responsible. Frankl says that if you are a responsible member of society than the meaning of life transcends from yourself rather from your own psyche. He also says that if we for some reason cannot find meaning within ourselves it has to be from some outside source. This is referred to as service. And an example of this is love. Victor Frankl describes three ways in which we can discover the meaning of life; Creating work-doing a deed, experiencing something-someone, and by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering.