What are you doing?

I came to the realization, some months back, that existence coincides with purpose. To what extent I haven’t yet figured, but I feel they are intricately intertwined.

In the natural world, everything exists for a purpose. A shrimp, feeding off free floating detritus in the ocean, exists for the purpose of eating this free floating food and to serve as food for larger animals; i.e. whales. In the wild, the lion exists as a predator to keep other animal populations in check. But here is the thing; the lion, doesn’t comprehend that it is keeping animal populations in check. In fact, its incapable of comprehending, to the best of our knowledge, anything further than its need to feed to keep itself alive.

As observers, free from the society of prides, we are able to understand the lion’s purpose on the plains of Africa even though the lion is not. Of course, this is also due to our advance nervous system development and our own formidable mental capabilities. But yet; what then is the human being’s purpose? Can we know? Like the lion is unable to understand that his actions insure the African countryside will not be overrun with grazers, are we ourselves incapable of understanding our own purpose in existence?

As a human being myself, sometimes unsure of even that, I feel that purpose defines my inner motives. So often times, when purpose is not presented to me from an outside source, I make purpose. That, I feel, is the most important thing that makes us human.

Without purpose, what is the purpose of existence? Well wait, does there have to be a purpose to existence or even a purpose in existence? Why wouldn’t there be? The entire world around us, the universe even, exists because every part of it and everything in it serves a purpose. So then, the question resurfaces, what is the purpose of a human being in the universe. What do we do that serves a purpose to the universe?

We may never know. We may never want to know. I recall now a quote from one of my favorite movies, The Matrix. One of the “disconnected” is talking with an agent of the matrix, musing over how knowing the truth of reality is worse than the ignorance of not knowing. He states, “Ignorance is bliss.” I concur. The ignorance of not knowing our purpose just might be better than knowing the truth of it.