Meaning of Life: Love?

Im calling upon the aid of RestlessMind here real quick. If something like this has already been posted, please tell me and provide me with a link.

That being said, i shall now get to my point. I was sitting down watching a program on the history channel. It was about String Theory and M Theory. It was quite hard wrapping my mind around all of that shit. A very common thought came to mind. If i were dead, I would either know the answer to my questions, or be dust in the wind without a thought to think about. Either way, i would be out of life's mystery. Of course i wouldent dream of killing myself. But this time, i thought "Why wont i kill myself?". Fear? No, i dont fear death. So i could see how my life turns out? Not really. Sure, im curious, but it really wouldent matter to me either way. The only reason i could conclude to as why i wouldent kill myself is my loved ones. If i were dead, i would cause great pain to everyone who loves me. Also, i love them too much to leave them. In nature, the meaning of life it to survive. Darwinism and whatnot. But to humans, would the meaning of life not be Love?

When you gave thought to why you wouldnt want to be dead, love was your conclusion, that which motivates you to remain alive.
But that isnt true of everyone, for some it is to see how life turns out, for others a fear of death keeps them from killing theirselves, god, religion, achieving success, i think with the debate about what the meaning of life is, I have always believed that it is subjective, and for everyone it is different, and that it also changes throughout our lives.

quote:

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= Oblivion

In nature, the meaning of life it to survive. Darwinism and whatnot. But to humans, would the meaning of life not be Love?

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Well I am the true "cynic" here, so I say that since the word "love" has no meaning, nor any true meaning, and it has confused meanings, so then "love" means virtually nothing at all.

Link Love here = http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/love

So the meaning of life being some vague emotional sentiment with no true meaning at all - would be an awful deffinition for humanity's purpose.

Love may not have a definite definition, but it is none the less there. I guess it all comes down to the person and their beliefs in love. Eh... I just thought i would throw my ideas into the everloving pile of bullshit that is humanity's ideas on the meaning of life. Anymore thoughts?

I do not object to believing in love, as I was just being cynical - again.

My belief is that we each are here for some higher purpose, like we are to make our world into a better place then the way we found it.

I believe we are NOT here to be self serving, and not to be selfish, but to serve the world in making it a better place.

Would not it be an awful event? if after our death there were people over our grave saying - "it would have been better if that guy had never been born."

If my living made the world into a worse place then my own life meaning would be in the negative side, and that would be a waste in my opinion - a wasted life.

If i had to describe love, it would be that i can think of him and then I'l notice im walking down the street with a massive grin on my face to the point where passers by must think i look like a complete idiot and i dont even care. Another guy likes me, he is charming, very goodlooking, infact perfect in every way. I should like him, any sane girl would, but i dont, becasue it just doesnt feel right as it does with him.

I think quite possibly it is not love itself, but the connection to others that love creates.

We strive (or at least I do) for the strongest of connections and thrive on the pursuit of the ultimate connectivity to one another.

Yes? No?

Absolutely. But is it the connection to others that love creates, or is it that connection that leads to love?

Why does your 'love' have to be a meaning of life? That you care (I use care in place of love as it seems more accurate than a word that has probably a thousand definitions) so much about the people close to you that you wouldn't kill yourself because of the pain it would cause them and maybe also because you don't want them to think ill of you.

This care for those close to you is really just a reason not to kill yourself but not a lifetime objective, it's really just a tiny little decision among the many we make every day. After all if our meaning was to care about each other what else would we do with our days when we're capable of so much more? People have been searching for the meaning of life for centuries shouldn't it be reserved for something much grander the tiny amount of people out of the 7 billion or so that would be affected by your death?

Maybe the true horror to this, is that there is no meaning to life/love but that we ascribe.

The main problem is that we convince ourselves we already have an inkling of what love is, enough to throw ourselves this way and that in pursuit of it.

But what if we don't know what it is?

What if all we know of love, are the biased memories of what has passed?

It seems to me more and more that love between two people has resentment woven through it. Resentment born of dependency that love comes through the other. There is a lot of shadow-play, I believe, in this regard, subconsciously manipulating the other for more and more attention/tenderness/intimacy/sex.

As love can be loosely defined, I feel that by saying love is the meaning of life, you are in turn saying that the meaning of life is defined under your own terms. Therefore, the meaning of life cannot be a single universal principle.

The big thing I want to express is this, why must the meaning of life fall under one such heading as "love"? Why can life not have multiple meanings? In addition why must we always look for the purpose or meaning of life? Surely we have never found an answer to such a question, so why do we persist to do something we continue to fail doing?

This leads me back to my first statement. Could it be that the meaning of life is different for everyone? Suppose one person gave you an answer that seemed indisputable, well surely you would be convinced that this answer must be the meaning of life. But what if another person were to be given the same question. Would they too be so convinced?

Given evidence from other threads alone, I should think not. People rarely seem to agree on any one topic, so why would what one person believes to be the meaning of life be true for everyone else?

Furthermore, these beliefs would only be personal truths. it doesn't seem to me that mere speculation will warrant a theory of absolute truth.

So to sum things up; is there simply one meaning of life? Is the meaning of life simply a self interpretation, a sort of paradigm? And finally, if it is, could we be justified in claiming that our paradigm is a universal truth?