Have you been able to find meaning in your life?
Yes, I find what I look for. Everybody will find what they look for. I look for ways to help others find meaning and purpose, and in the process I found my purpose.The poet Maya Angelou,once said.People may not remember exactly what you did, or what you said, but they will always remember how you made them feel.The information age is presenting complex, challenging issues, and forcing us to look with new eyes at our world, and more importantly, at ourselves. The information age is the penultimate consumer, and what it consumes is not always obvious to people.It consumes YOUR TIME AND ATTENTION. But if we don't keep our hearts and minds on the big picture vision for our lives, we can get lost down the rabbit hole of details and swept away by the minutia of a life of speed, endless choices and infinite distractions.Understanding our high level values or what I like to call our DNA, helps keep us on track with both small details and big picture vision, which is your legacy.All of us will leave one. A legacy is not about size, it's about impact. It's about the difference you made in the lives of others. It's about what people will say about you after you are no longer here. It's the quality of your relationships, the questions you dared to ask, the way's you forgot yourself to help others, it's listening deeply, it's connecting to something beyond just the workaday world.Your legacy is the very marrow in your bones.I’ve learned… that you shouldn’t go through life with a catcher’s mitt on both hands … you’ll need to throw something backAs you pursue your vision of excellence out in the world, whatever that means to you, see each step as a piece of your legacy. Every step, no matter how small, leaves a ripple of yourself in the world. It makes a tiny impression on the fabric of life. It ripples out in ways you may never know. Isn't that a beautiful thought to think that a kind word or gesture or helping someone need may ripple out in a powerful way that began with you.Start from the end in mind and then live your way towards it and you will find your purpose.
How to find meaning in life as an atheist?
In the past year or so I have decided I don't believe in any god. There are reasons but they would take forever to type out and I assume most of them can be inferred as they're the reasons every atheist has. My question is, once you have accepted that there is no god and we're all just sort of on our own, how do you get back your purpose for living? The fact that we're all going to die some day and the world will just fade to black is extremely depressing. I try to tell myself that I have to make some contribution to the world and my life will have meant something. Something helpful and substantial, particularly to some field of science or health. I don't have to be famous or anything, I just want my life to have mattered once I'm gone. So many people just live life going through the steps and once they die it's like "what was the point?!" I'm only 17 so I think this is a reasonable thing to aspire towards. I also believe that you should make the most of your life and have fun, so I want to travel and see the world as much as I can. I've never been out of the United States, and I always say that the comfort of this country allows you to exist, but to live you have to see the world and have many different experiences. I suppose I've answered my own question for myself at least. Any thoughts or elaborations?
Did having a kid give you meaning in life?
No.A child is a different individual from the moment that child is born. Making someone else “the meaning of your life” places an unjust burden on that person. Children are not responsible of your emotional balance, sense of acomplishment or ambitions. They're not here to fulfill your dreams. They're here to fulfill their dreams. And more than half of their lives have absolutely nothing to do with you. Making them the meaning of your own life is wrong for you and wrong from them. You help them in the beginning - not live through them.Children have their own lives and we should respect this. It is a parents responsibility to help and guide them during their formative years and support them to become the best version of themselves but this is it. They don't belong to anyone else but themselves and you'd better move “your life's meaning” somewhere in YOUR life, not theirs.