by Claude Morales

Created on: November 02, 2010   Last Updated: November 03, 2010

Why do we live ? The question leads us immediately to believing in tomorrow. Yesterday is past history, tomorrow does not exist yet and today is here. So why do we live today ? Yesterday was the time when we learned a lot as Yesterday dates back to our birth date. Over these years we did learn a lot about what we were and who we are. But from this point onwards, it is not sure that this question has got a correct answer, at least from a philosophical point of view. The view was only a physical one:

We live because we are human beings and we are here because our parents decided once to have a baby. So we live. We live today. Tomorrow does not exist yet and no one knows what will happen on that day. Basically the question has got a physical answer: we came to birth by our parents’ will and have to manage and cope with it, alike animals in the savanna. 

But there is a difference: we are human beings and we can ask ourselves the question about why we live. 

In the early years of our existence until very late, we were not aware of our future, of our existence itself: we lived and were happy. It is only at a later date as our reasoning sharpened that our thinking about life became more acute: we realize that our life will end one day, in an unavoidable way. 

As from this point, the original question takes an another meaning: since we know we will die one day, why do we live ? 

Again, we can relate the question to the single concept of our physical existence while formalizing it a bit more: our parents made us: it was their choice to have an offspring and, beyond this simple observation, our species is being perpetuated. This is the first reason why we live. In turn, unless some unexpected bad reasons may come up, we will have a baby made, perhaps more than one, by God’s will just because it is our responsibility to bring our species forward. 

But there are other closely related reasons to this: on the ground that our birth is independent of our will and our death is inevitable, the question related to life takes different meanings depending on the reflection that we have on it. 

There are two main directions: 

-          A. Our life itself. There will be only one. So we must fulfill it fully.

-          B. The lives of others and we can participate in them in various ways, if we consider that part of our life could be a dedication

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