Why Live?
If:The desire for meaning, so eloquently expressed by some and seemingly absent in others, will eventually lead the mind to an inevitablility – and there is a curious path to this point: it traverses the foundations of thought; the intersection of sensory phenomena and internalized abstraction; the worlds around us and the ones within. For the masses, these bring about that inevitability of history and reality which suggests only one pure certainty in life: death.
The concept of death is frightening, rewarding, mysterious, and beyond comprehension. All truly vigorous thought strives to reconcile existence with death. Personal choices may dictate particular moods toward the thought of dying, but all people are tied to the event. Senescence may not seem affect certain organisms, but as humans (in our ultimately fragile human bodies) we do not partake in biological immortality as a whole.
This is not something that needs to be thought of during any day-to-day existence. Life often becomes particularly complicated when we deal with the inner conflict between natural instincts (an innate desire to liveand an innate expectation of death) and human thought derivations (a desire to live, granted by civilization, but no explicit suggestion on what to do with death).
We only have ourselves to create abstractions with. Somewhere between innate animal curiosity and logical reasoning, our explicit human self-consciousness makes itself apparent. As we gain knowledge, we begin to attribute more phenomena and abstractions to humanity's own doing, and less so to natural forces. As an example, this observation is loaded with such evident, abstract human bias, that anyone reading it would most certainly conclude its origin as human.
This movement beyond sheer curiosity has propelled the collective human race, expanding in an overt manner allegedly unparalleled by any other singular species on the planet. We are sleeping at the forefront of the food chain, with no real competitors in sight. What else could we have done but begun to dream?
Thus, armed with curiosity (our natural innate senses), abstract thought (a peculiarity that allows us to conceive things in our minds that do not exist in actuality), and the rise of human civilizations, we became more and more aware of our world and its phenomena. And yet, with this power came the realization that we cannot escape inevitable death.
We can suggest a proper place for death in the large scope of humanity, and thus living is merely a way to pass time before entering into the supposed natural cycle of life. But this is not always useful as a compensatory tool for living (just because I believe in the circle of life doesn't mean it makes me feel good about living). We can suggest the purpose of life is to simply reproduce plentifully, and hope that our traits are passed on via natural selection. But this may seem excessively selfish (the mind will not be satisfied even after birthing a hundred children). We can suggest that life is merely a precursor to an afterlife. But this could be considered risky business, especially when dealing with unknown or omnipotent factors (an all-loving God?). We may suggest a path towards infamy, or we may suggest a simple life of minimal subsistence. But these are ultimately not fulfilling, as an educated individual will find difficulty at either extreme of any discussion. Truly, this is one of the great ironies of knowledge indeed: the ever-growing likelihood of death looms larger as time passes.
A question of death is a question of philosophy. The answers to these questions rarely quell the inner expectations of life, the self-dreamed abstractive yearnings crawling around our minds. Why? No one educated is born with a completely free space in their minds. Remember, we can hardly recall the first few years of our lives. Thus, an indelible bias exists in our deepest notions of what is and what should be - these concepts are forged during the relatively frantic opening moments of our lives, when the concept of individual perception doesn't even exist. For most people, these biases cannot be cleanly erased, and we cannot simply start life anew decades into living. These biases affect the way we answer to our personal, abstract constructions. While we may be able to conclude something when discussing our thoughts, conclusions do not necessarily suggest a meaning or explanation for life and, by default, death.
Thus, I propose that the most important question is not: what is the meaning of life?
But rather, a question of more direct consequence: why should I not die?
Furthermore, I propose that if one answers this question meaningfully, from both the body's point of view (usually pretty easy to do) and the mind's point of view (possibly a lifetime struggle), then there will exist in that person's mind a naturally acceptable set of philosophies, derivable from the answer of the question, to help guide our minds through a vast reality. And we can get on with our lives.