A friend of mine recently asked me if I believed there was a point to this life.

“Do you feel like there is a point? Do you have a purpose?”

It was asked during and again after a pretty major personal conflict.

When I first responded my words came quickly.

Since then those two questions have been swimming all over my thoughts.

Questions of this magnitude are owed the contemplation.

So I will eventually write more.

For now, here are my initial thoughts.

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“Yes I do feel there is a point to living but unfortunately I can not present it to you as a grand plan or a greater purpose type of idea.

I am spiritual not religious.  I do not believe that when we die there is something greater then what we already have waiting for us (in life).

I’m almost certain that when we die we are just no longer living. Dead.  Sometimes stuff happens that makes me think maybe there is another “side” to life but I have no proof besides feelings to support that thought.

I can more easily tell you what my purpose is NOT then I can tell you what it is.

Sometimes I think that maybe we won’t realize our actual purpose until we lay in our coffins at our own funerals and our loved ones speak about us and how we did actually matter and why.

That’s why I like funerals.  Because even though they are sad and final it sheds light on the purpose of that persons life.  I think some would call that, perspective.

So, I think about life from a backwards point of view.  I am dead.  It is my funeral.  Who has the courage and the strength to get up before my family and friends and acquaintances to share a memory about me?  What would they say?

Our purpose in life may not be for us to determine or to strive towards.  It may just be something that happens along the way.  We may never know what it was because no one gushes on and on about one another until they are dead, and they are gone, and it’s too late to say, “Hey, thank you for never giving up on me.  You really made me think I could do these impossible things.  You really helped me stand up for myself and use the voice I never realized I had.  You really changed my life.”

 I try to live my life keeping that perspective.  I want random people that I may have forgotten over the years to show up to my funeral and gush to my family that I said something or did something, wrote something, sang something that stuck with them, maybe changed them, helped them, etc.

I want to make people smile, laugh and have fun.  I want to be memorable.  Sometimes I only feel forgettable.

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We are taught as teenagers to believe that it doesn’t matter what other people think about you but as we get older I think that’s a total crock of shit.

It does matter what other people think about you.  It does matter how you make other people feel. 

I think my purpose has a whole lot more to do with “them” then it does with me.“