BootsnAll Travel Community

I live because I haven't found a reliable way to stop breathing and you DO know what the secret to life is?

KEEP BREATHING

seriously I live for my cats, for my god children, I live to eat the lotus's on an Athenia island and tempt fair maidens from the far seas.....

I wish I knew.

There must be something, I can feel it just beneath the surface. Sure, there are people, things that make life wonderful.... but am I living for them?

I mean, I didn´t get a say in whether or not I was born. Simply, I´m alive because I don´t wish to kill myself. Is there a difference between this and consciously living for something? Am I living for life, or am I 'living' because I don´t wish to die? Could I possibly think of any more grossly ambiguous musings?

quote:

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Originally posted by Catch Me If You Can:
I mean, I didn´t get a say in whether or not I was born. Simply, I´m alive because I don´t wish to kill myself. Is there a difference between this and consciously living for something? Am I living for life, or am I 'living' because I don´t wish to die? Could I possibly think of any more grossly ambiguous musings?

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I think your supposed to guess.
But seriously, it's plausbile that you live for yourself. Your alive, so life just is.

I live in the hope /belief that what I say/do will be of benefit to the world and others!!

I live to explore this life I've been given.

There seems to be somethig within me that works toward transformation.

There seems to be something within me that keeps pushing me, driving me--even dragging me--forward...upward and onward.

I am a slave to my life. I live to see where it takes me.

I don't think I've ever really thought about why I continue to get up every morning, but thinking about it now I suppose because I'm expected to. I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing, which is getting up, going to work, etc. I also feel that I go on because I'm seeking and haven't found.

Depends on the day. Some days I live just to get home and cuddle up to my sweet. Some days I live to fight and change a small bit of the world. Some days I live just to observe.
There are good phases and worse phases, sometimes they last a week, sometimes a year. I don't think you always live for the same thing. There's different things that catch your attention and your want and your interest at different times. And it all builds on each other and undermines each other.

Remember what Benjamin Franklin once said:" the most important thing one can ask is,'what good can I do in it'".

It's strange, but I don't know if "happiness" itself is necessarily the thing to live for or work for. For me, it's more of a conviction, something I believe in to my bones, in spite of what anyone around me says. Like, artistic projects that are in my head......I feel like I can't leave life til they're accomplished, and they aren't, not yet anyhow. I feel sometimes I have to be alone, have to say something, make something........like it's important to say it. Maybe this doesn't make sense......or does it?

I believe there is no goal in life but to set one for yourself and hold on to it until you achieve it. I often held on in moments I was close to giving up, stubbornness sometimes despite lack of own believes, but in the end I would not want to live my life without that goal to achieve and that path to follow. First, my goal is to travel a lot and eventually settle in Scandinavia, a side-dream I have is to found a sports and social club for autistic people (as I am autistic myself and never had the luck to be able to practise my hobbies to the full because of the hostile environments - I hope to offer other autists a more protected place some day). But travelling and the Scandinavian dream come first.

To love the people around me, experience everything I possibly can, to see my children become their own people, and to feel IT ALL!

What do I live for?

To love and be loved. Of course. What else?

Two years ago, right before I was leaving for a 4 month trip to India, 3 of my friends were killed when a suicidal driver rammed her car into theirs while they were sitting at a stop light. She didn't achieve her goal, but the loss of my friends' lives affected hundreds of people here in Chicago and across the country. One of my best friends in this life became a widow at a very early age, and the music community suffered a huge blow, as all three guys played in rock bands and were just awesome human beings.

As I helped my widowed friend through her grief, as our community supported all of us through OUR grief, I thought so very much about life and why I keep going and why some people don't want to and what people leave behind when they pass on... and man, i guess it just became very clear that that was it. The reason to live, the meaning of life, whatever you want to call it: to love and be loved.

What else could there possibly be in the world worth living for? we don't need anything else.

I would say that everything posted on this thread as something to live for is an expression of love, whether it's traveling or making art or watching your kids grow up or changing the world or learning a new language or growing your own vegetables. love means connecting - with yourself, with your community and with the world.

And with that, I love you! All of you!

(Rest in peace, J, D and M, and bon voyage as you keep on travelin' on the other side!)

I live to love, serve, and know God. Or at least I try.

And in doing so I like to travel, DX, eat good food, sleep, bike, hike, and to geography.

Me.

Though I'm not quite sure yet what me wants, and who me really is.

This may sound typical, but I live for the Lord.

When I was in highschool, I had a completely amazing encounter with God, after being steered far away from religion because I couldn't stand it, and resented it, at times hated it.

I always searched for something to live for and up till that point it was something new every night, but when I came to experience God, I realized that my soul just wouldn't be satisfied with anything else.

Of course, I'll always be seeking, searching, learning, trying to understand just what I'll do with my life that can make a global impact-because we are in desperate need of something, whether it be God, or whatever anyone believes-but I know I'm not alone in my quest, and I can sleep peacefully at night knowing that I have something to live for that is outside myself.

Not meaning to offend or impose my beliefs, just expressing my passionate opinion.

Thanks and Gig Em

John 3:30

Brendan

This is a very good question and something we need to actively think about and answer.

So let me begin by saying that I am living because I don't have the courage to kill myself. I know what this sounds like, but it part of a rational argument that has played out in my head. I think it is interesting that you use the term "oblivion", because no matter what we do, all of our acts, accomplishments, and even our identity is ultimately headed for oblivion. Death is simply non-existence, there is no after life, no reincarnation, just loss of consciousness and loss of all experience. Thomas Nagel has helped me better define the phenomenon of death through his writing, and according to Nagel (and many others), we did not exist indefinitely, our lives are simply a blip in the incredible vastness of time. And if you are still uncomfortable with non-existance, all you have to do is think of the time before you were born. What exists beyond your earliest memories? What exists beyond stories you hear of your birth from other people? Nothing, and that is because you did not exist before a certain point in time. There is a vastness of nothingness before birth and the same after death. It is only between birth and death, during the time that we call "life" that we are subjected to immense trials and suffering.

So as for living, it is overrated. Suicide enters everyones mind at some point, but according to my research, it is incredibly difficult to kill yourself. Unless you get a shotgun and gather enough willpower to pull the trigger, there is no surefire way to die. In other words, the popular notions of suicide, such as overdosing, slicing wrists, or jumping off a building will probably fuck you up irreversibly while not killing you. In my opinion, it is an abomination that people who so desperately want to escape life have to resort to methods such as these when we have the pharmacological knowledge to accomplish dying much more comfortably, painlessly and surely. I believe we have a right to die.

This is not some macarbe fascination, but an investigation into our physicality and mortality. So why am I living? It is because I am not dead, and I can't find a Dutch doctor to comply

In the meantime, I take refuge in fleeting moments of pleasure, good books, good food, sex and the people that I love.

Remember, Travel is only luxurious in hindsight.

I had a teacher in college in a small English Lit class who started off the quarter by asking who had read the NYTimes that morning...maybe 30% of the classes hands went up...

As it was an existentialism (loosely) class, he later asked how many had thought about suicide or at least contemplated what it might be like...similar response rate...

And he quickly followed with... "well, my goal is to get you all to think about it by the end of the quarter...and I'd say if the rest of you who don't will just start reading the Times every morning, it shouldn't be too hard"

I about fell out of my chair laughing.

This was shortly following Bush <borat voice>"taking power"<borat voice/>...so, it made even more sense in that context.

I might as well throw my 2 cents in here. I don't really live 'for' anything. I get up, go to my job, which I dislike (actually it's very near hate), eat dinner, read or hang out with friends (rather close to friend, singular, actually). I think I get up because I have a routine set, which doesn't include killing myself or feeling depressed, thankfully (I used to get depressed a lot before though).

I live by default (as boring and as unromantic as that is) and I venture to say that many others do the same.

Useless_099