What is the purpose of life?

I sit watching magpies land in my yard to eat the cat food I place for them. Mothers show new fledglings how to pick up a piece of cat food in their beaks instead of having to do it for them. Older, more mature birds take a small amount and leave the rest - they don't pig out on everything available, they leave something for later. Unlike many human beings.

Apart from them being our fellow creatures who inhabit this small, blue ball that rotates day in and day out so the sun can keep us warm and sustain life, why are they here? What good do they do for me, you, the planet?

The creatures we eat, fish, pigs, sheep, cattle, all provide a food source for us. Protein to go. We don't eat magpies or most other birds, so why are they here if their purpose is not to provide a food source?

It all comes down to understanding the purpose of life. It's a question philosophers, hotel goers, children, scientists, the curious, teachers and others have been asking ever since we became conscious enough to ask it.

When you see a magpie fighting with a reflection of itself in your car mirror, you realise that it has no sense of self. Cats and dogs have been seen to do the same - with mirrors, not on cars!

You and I have a sense of self. We look in the mirror and we know it's us. Our consciousness is more advanced than that of our fellow travellers.

We may be more conscious, but we still don't know what the purpose of life is - any life.

Does it matter that we don't know? Probably not. Whether you know our purpose, we have an opportunity to create the purpose we want. Free will. If we had a purpose thrust upon us, we wouldn't have free will.

Imagine: "Your mission, if you accept it, is to be taxi driver and during your lifetime rape and murder at least four young, beautiful women whose purpose in life it is to be raped and murdered. After that, as a result of your actions you will spend 40 years in prison and die an ugly, painful death from cancer of the pancreas. Now, hop to it."

What would you do? Would you kill yourself immediately, or live the life you have been intended to live?

I don't know what I'd do, probably kill myself.

There are some things that we are either not intended to know, or that are simply unknowable to us. Our purpose in life is obviously one of them.

I agree with Donald Broadribb's statement above.

Get on with your life and accept that you may never know if it had a purpose other than what you provided it.

Robin