What is the Meaning and Purpose of Life?

William Shakespeare.
(Chandos Portrait)

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.
(W. Shakespeare, 'Macbeth'. Act v, scene 5)

There is  little to add really to this masterly definition of the futility of life. Indeed, two things inexorably invalidate any purpose and meaning life can have: ageing and death (not to mention diseases), so any quest for purpose of life is a total waste of time. Still, as self-aware beings the thinking humans have always pondered on this question. It hurts to accept that our life has no Meaning or Purpose at all, so we desperately try to at least build up an illusion. Throughout the history of mankind the belief in afterlife and eternal soul has arguably been the only source of hope that what we do in our lives signifies something, in other words, there must be someone somewhere who cares.  Being unable to see the bigger picture, all we can do is merely speculate why we have been dragged into this vale of tears.

First and foremost, there’s no universal answer or single purpose that would suit everyone, but rather each to their own. Depending on the frame of reference we use, the purpose of life can be considered either "local" or "global" similarly to the parameters in the relativity.

Locally, the purpose of our life is, in part, defined, by our intellect, while in the celebrated passage above Shakespeare deals with "global" purpose. In other words, there’s a difference between objective and subjective purpose of life – what it consists in for the individual and for the universe (or another person), respectively, but only a subjective purpose has the power to confer happiness. On the other hand, objective purpose is hardly our concern. So each life has its unique "illusion of purpose".

The most primitive meaning and purpose life can have is that of animals (well, inanimate things and any matter in general also have purpose – to provide the setting for the big show). 

Their main aim in life is to survive and keep existing through following basic instincts. Therefore, the only thing they worry about is to satisfy their physical needs, that is, to feed (which also includes the disposal of resulting waste), mate/reproduce, sleep and escape from predators.

Most bipeds follow the same pattern, only instead of wilderness we are in the middle of a concrete-metal-glass jungle, surrounded by sophisticated toys, such as cars, mobile phones, computers etc, and use TOOLS to do basically the same things (eat, sleep, mate, fight for territory and resources, escape from predators).

While animals can do fine (and in fact are much better off) without humans, we can’t do without them (although we aren't fully aware of the fact). Animals are key to the natural balance of the planet’s ecosystems, apart from greatly contributing to its beauty, consequently their very existence is the fulfilment of their purpose.

As for the humans, we are supposed to make something more of our lives, otherwise there would be absolutely no point in possessing a conscious intellect.
Could you think of any reason why God or who/whatever created us would go to the trouble of bringing into existence such a destructive, harmful and deficient species, when both the universe and this planet get by very well without any intelligent life at all (as they did for millions of years), if it wasn't for some greater purpose? Don't flatter yourself --  "greater" here simply stands for "bigger (show)" in terms of magnitude rather than higher or more important.

Over the centuries sages like Shakespeare felt, and that's probably the most reasonable view, that we come into this world to provide a spectacle for God(s) (and we do indeed make a spectacle of ourselves), or simply a game to play for more sophisticated beings (aliens?).

Well, others say it’s all due to a blind chance (the Big Bang? But who or what blew it up?), however I think any blind chance has a sighted drive — an invisible sophisticated "guidance system".
Chance is an unconscious necessity, probably determined by the circumstances and the individual's nature. In the end it all depends on the angle you look at the issue from — you just have to choose the meaning that suits you best.

The highest purpose a life can have is artistic creation. Lives of great artists were full of elevated meaning, since they imitated, though obviously on a smaller scale, the Maker’s activity. The principal difference, in my humble opinion, between humans and animals lies in the attempts to understand the world around us and the ability to create, not only tools, as some animals can do that too, but masterpieces of art (sadly, the latter belongs to the past – modern art definitely blurs the distinction between animal and human creations) -- not that there aren’t fine artists in animal kingdom, look ,for example, at bower birds and lyrebird.

Lofty ideas aside, lesser mortals’ lives can still have some local purpose.

Meaning and purpose of life.
The dawn of new era.

As a child I imagined this life as a long and winding road to a mountain only from the peak of which the true purpose of our lives could be seen or revealed, and logically only the best would make it to the top, but it could take more than one life to complete the ascent. 

Well, that was an idealistic dream of childhood. Today I stick to a much simpler concept:

Robert Louis Stevenson

‘To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.‘Robert Louis Stevenson

There's a problem though with this formula, does the same apply to murderers and other wrongdoers? Probably we all are designed to play our parts in the big show.without possibility to escape. 

So the best thing (entertainment, distraction, call it whatever you want) those of us who aren't endowed with some great (GREAT, not commercially profitable) talent can do is try to develop whatever skills we possess to the best of our abilities, or acquire some, as long as these skills aren't used to do evil. As Hamlet so rightly states in his monologue, fear of what life after death (if there’s any) might have in store, comeuppance or punishment, retribution for one’s deeds in this life, one’s just desserts, is in large part the reason why most people so desperately clutch to life no matter what. Whether you believe in reincarnation, afterlife, karma etc. or not, it’s wise to behave just in case.

‘Happiness consists in exercising without hindrance one’s abilities, whatever they may be.’ (Aristotle) 

For religious (either lapsed or practising) people the supreme purpose of life is to seek God.

That said, at the end of the day the only real point of life is to love, to feel the sea breeze, to listen to bird songs, to go to beautiful places, to build your home, to run across the poppy field, to sail etc, etc, etc, and, most importantly, to put passion into whatever you do — that is, to have fun! Of course, the most meaningful lives are those if the rich, the well-off, the ruling elites. All the best and most beautiful things in the world are for them. The wealthier you are the better it gets. All Gods, prophets, miracles, progress, and similar forces  work solely for their delight and well-being, while the rabble just provides the background / backdrop to offset the main characters of the story.

Under many circumstances life doesn't seem to make any sense at all (for instance, diseases, etc.); in such cases it's our aspirations or fear of death that makes most of us cling to life at any cost, thus prolonging the agony. It’s really hard, for example, to find any subjective meaning of the life of someone in an irreversible coma (other than creating jobs for caretakers). Death is by no means the worst finale.
At the other end of the scale are those whose only purpose in life is to do evil. Many individuals are apparently sent to mutually punish each other.

Socrates. (Pio-Clementino)

Some lives find their meaning in serving or helping someone else, I call it objective purpose — from this point of view the whole humanity is nothing more than a foundation for the realisation of a few geniuses, and together we still provide amusement for someone high above.

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.
As You Like It (W. Shakespeare)

To sum up, life has no raison d'être, no other purpose than the meaning you manage to fill it with, or as F. Nietzche brilliantly defined in The Birth of Tragedy:

"For this one thing must above all be clear to us, to our humiliation and exaltation, that the entire comedy of art is not at all performed, say, for our betterment and culture, and that we are just as little the true authors of this art-world : rather we may assume with regard to ourselves, that it's true author uses us as pictures and artistic projections, and that we have our highest dignity in our significance as works of art, for only as an aesthetic phenomenon is existence and the world eternally justified while, of course, our consciousness of this our specific significance hardly differs from the kind of consciousness that the soldiers painted on canvas have of the battle represented thereon. Hence, all our knowledge of art is at bottom quite illusory, because, as knowing persons, we are not one and identical with the Being who, as the sole author and spectator of this comedy of art, prepares a perpetual entertainment for himself. Only in so far as the genius in the act of artistic production coalesces with this primordial artist of the world, does he get a glimpse of the eternal essence of art, for in this state he is, in a marvellous manner, like the weird picture of the fairy-tale which can at will turn its eyes and behold itself; he is now at once subject and object, at once poet, actor, and spectator."

We can't avoid being part of the drama, all living creatures are enslaved by life, but we can try to enjoy our own performance; seek happiness, make the most of every minute, have fun without doing harm to other people or nature, and avoid taking life too seriously — however long it may last, life's short and time is swift. 

Those who cherish ambitions of reaching the top notch of the scale, though, could adopt the following quote as part of their credo:

'The end of life is to be like God, and the soul following God will be like Him.' — Socrates


Then again, life is almost certainly an illusion in the infinite chain of fractal universes.

Whatever you put love into is the purpose of your life.