When you’re born, and when you find out why.
-Mark Twain
Who here has found their “why” and what lead you there?
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My parents had sex. Though that was more traumatic to learn than important.
There’s a saying that goes something like “The best time to plant a tree is 10 years ago. The second best time is today.”
So those are my answers. The why keeps changing.
My parents are virgins.
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Yep. None fall off of the list, there are just more of them.
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I doubt anyone knows their why until they’re dying, the game is over and they reflect back. Most people still won’t know.
Twain excelled in his lane, and had crowning achievements to look at above and beyond typical existence.
The majority of us plug along one trade-off and the consequences of its decision at a time, no “muse” to point at.
Then there’s always the 3rd party religion or philosophy answer to fade in to. A purpose of serving a greater good with largely undefined values, but belonging and serving something by living a set of rules.
I think what Twain may have been referencing was finding a “groove”. When talent, desire, time and opportunity all collide and push you forward for a while. It can feel like you’ve met a purpose. In my experience these moments ebb and flow but maybe the longest one would’ve been my purpose when it’s over.
That or procreation. We are biological beings, and we’ve turned sex in to many things with many views around it, but it exists to make more of us. Just like any other sexually replicated being. I’m not convinced that we aren’t all that different than rabbits, just too smart for our own good and we complicate natural functions. So passing our existence on to another generation could be the answer.
Or maybe Twain was hit by a lighting bolt I haven’t experienced yet, so I can’t understand.
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Man this was great. I wouldn’t have really known how to answer this question but a lot of what you said is how I feel too.
I do believe in a higher power and have found purpose in that which I understand isn’t where everyone is at and I am not going to “preach”. The reason I mention it though is because with that belief I have discovered how purposeless many things are that I used to care about.
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We got Vinnie Barbarino over here.
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I knew you Italian guys like to stick together.
I’m young so I don’t quite understand why people think so much about philosophical/“spiritual” topics like “why am I here” or “is there a higher power”
I don’t care. I’m here aren’t I? It’s more about maximising outcomes given what’s in front of me and what I have control over
To answer the question. Most important days (so far) are 1) being born 2) getting accepted by my undergrad school…. And only that school
It’s completely changed my career trajectory. Had I gone to any other school, I’d be either unemployed or working as a management consultant or in a finance role, and probably miserable.
Now I’m in grad school and it’s hard, but at least I like the work and the lifestyle
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Massive bong hits.
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It’s to feel some value or significance since the other choice is believing we live in a universe that is indifferent to our existence. It’s the difference between finding meaning without vs within. It’s also a way to defer moral responsibility to a higher power. The higher power can be God, government, ideology, etc.
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This is how I feel. It’s quite freeing for me personally. If I screw up, it matters less since I’m not even a blip in the grand scheme of things
All I need to do is maximise my own outcomes and those of the few I care about
I’m the same tbh. “Why are we here? Because we’re here. Roll the bones” - Neil Peart.
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For a lot of people assigning a purpose to your presence helps to define what maximizing the outcome means, which determines the general direction or path to get to that maximized outcome.
Otherwise you could easily replace “maximizing my outcome” with “Living my best life” “YOLO!” or some other meaningless phrase.
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I don’t think anybody can really answer the question of why they exist definitively. Every attempt is exactly that, without a “grade” for accuracy. At least not in any literally realized sense.
It’s never my intent to “evangelize” anyone away from their beliefs, and for those who believe in a higher power or have selected a religious framework to exist within, more power to them.
My personal view is that religions are almost like philosophical theme parks. They create worlds to live in mentally & emotionally, and this convergence is often called spirituality. Then within the walls of their created existence they provide answers to these types of questions along with “best practice” guidelines for living. They universally require the believer to reject any other ideas in order to carry water, however, no matter how unproven. “By faith, not sight” et cetera. It’s framed differently in religious teachings of course but amounts to choosing to believe and essentially buying in.
Like buying tickets to Disney Land and visiting an attraction. If you choose to “buy in” to the attractions experience while there you can really immerse in it. The difference is everyone accepts Disney as imaginary, and re-enters the broader world when it’s over vs swearing Mickey Mouse is real against all odds and no matter what anyone says, with zero real proof. Just a decision to believe.
So it’s hard for me to buy in. I legitimately see religions as one of many philosophies, but a philosophy encapsulated with puinitive/reward based systems and societies built around it. Rewards and punishments can and have been both physical and very real and imagined throughout history, but serve the same purpose ultimately. Assuming mental buy in and a choice to believe.
My gut feeling is that our “purpose” of existence is biological and we serve a natural purpose of continuation of existence through offspring. The rest is sort of superfluous from how we live our time to why it exists.
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Was Mark Twain just poppin’ off one liners, or was this sentence part of some longer piece of writing?
Do we know where this quote came from, so we can look at the surrounding sentences for context?
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When the thread started I was trying to recollect what two days were most important in my life. It seemed difficult for me to identify any single day of importance. Obviously, had I not been born, no day, regardless of how important, could have followed. But I have no memory of that day, so I feel I shouldn’t assign it as an important day. Then Anna added a philosophical view of the important days.
That got me thinking a little deeper, only to find that I pretty much view every day as important, as they build upon themselves. So, I decided to look for the two most significant days. That brings up relationships, but all of my relationships built over a course of a period of time, making any singular day just the result of the sum of the previous days. (I never fathered a child, so I missed that experience of a “single important” day of the birth of a child.)
As to the two most significant days that impacted my life in regards to weight training, a common theme of all of this forum of T-Nation, both will always be close to me.
Number 1: As I was progressing in competitive bodybuilding I set a goal that I thought might be within my reach: “To compete in a national bodybuilding contest and look like I belonged on stage.” I had placed second in my class in a state contest, so I thought it might be a good year to get my feet wet. I entered the AAU Jr. Mr. USA in 1979. I was in the Tall Class (over 5’ 10"). I thought I looked okay and even felt that I would finish ahead of a few of the competitors. As it turned out at the end over the night show, I made the top five. I was very pleasantly surprised. They started at 5th Place and I was still left. As it turned out, to my shock, I was chosen the winner. I very significant day in my life.
Number 2: Also bodybuilding related. I was 48 years old, and being less successful in recent years in the Over 40 Master’s Nationals, I decided to drop back a level and compete until I turned 50 and enter the Over 50 Master’s Nationals. I was eyeing the Southern States Over 40’s and things were going well, until they weren’t. No matter what I did I was getting weaker and could achieve the definition that I had grown accustomed to attain. I went ahead and entered the contest and didn’t place. After the show and I cycled off AAS, my strength dropped drastically. I went to the doctor, as I thought that I probably had cancer. It was that day that I was told I had dermatomyositis. That day was the end of my competitive bodybuilding. A very significant day in my life.
I know that in the big scheme of life that those two days are very frivolous.
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If it matters to you it isn’t frivolous.
Good story too.
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Being born
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And more importantly…being born again
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