What do you live for?

[Losty]

Obvious title is obvious.
The answer is not cookies, and no suprise, it's not even waffles.
Nor shall it be pizza, and pizza shall it not be.
For those who don't get it: what is your purpose in life? Why have you not killed yourself yet?

As a human being, it is not in my nature to kill myself. We are genetically wired for survival.

[drfuzzy]

I think it's a good question.  

I was raised Pentecostal.  I'm also a lesbian.  Life slowly conspired to turn my views atheist.  (For which I am intensely grateful!)
My parents disowned my brother and me in the late '80's due to orientation and religion issues.
I have battled depression, and understand what it is to feel suicidal.
I have multiple advanced degrees, which, due to poor choices and economic changes, never helped me find a good-paying job.
I have not been successful with relationships, and have been single for decades.

What do I live for?  I sometimes wonder myself.  I do have some family left - a great brother and a couple o' cousins.
I do think there is something special about taking the chance to help others when we can.


But you know, being an atheist . . . we're alive. This is all we get.  Somehow, that makes a beautiful sunset, or a lovely
fire on a cold night, or time chatting with friends over a bottle of wine - - more precious.  And committing suicide simply
wastes that time, it destroys the opportunity to be grateful for what we are given in the limited time we have.

[I_am_not_mafia]

I can relate to what drfuzzy has said.

One particularly bad winter when I was literally obsessed with suicide I had to ask myself this very question. It came down to not wanting to hurt my parents and wanting to achieve something with my research to have made it all worthwhile. In the end I decided that not wanting to hurt my parents wasn't actually helping me because it was just another burden to feel bad about. So the only thing left was my research.

From there I promised myself another year to live before I would decide again and from that I made a slow recovery over several years. But I am still driven to make some kind of discovery or some contribution to the human race. My baseline contentedness is determined by whether I feel like I am making progress or not.

[Longhorn]

The answer is not cookies, and no suprise, it's not even waffles.

>:c

[abaris]

In case anyone wonders why I don't give the standards beauty pageant answer about saving the world - I live for me and my well being.

[Sappho]

The answer is not cookies, and no suprise, it's not even waffles.

>:c

that line was especially for you

---

In case anyone wonders why I don't give the standards beauty pageant answer about saving the world - I live for me and my well being.

how dare you

---

Obvious title is obvious.
The answer is not cookies, and no suprise, it's not even waffles.
Nor shall it be pizza, and pizza shall it not be.
For those who don't get it: what is your purpose in life? Why have you not killed yourself yet?

As a human being, it is not in my nature to kill myself. We are genetically wired for survival.

Being human transcends our natural behaviour. Yes of course, it is in our genes to not kill ourselves, but we can easely put that aside. There is a reason why suicide is a main cause of death around the world. So that's why the question: why don't you kill yourself?

[Longhorn]

And on a more serious and slightly cheesy note, I live for the thought of feeling normal again

[Losty]

Suicide is not one of the main causes of death around the world. http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs310/en/
It isn't natural for people to kill themselves, most people don't. I haven't because I don't want to, it's that simple. I believe in the right to die, I do not think suicide is immoral. If I wanted to die, I would first seek medical treatment incase the desire was caused by some physical or mental illness. If I found myself to be healthy and of sound mind, or unhealthy and untreatable, and still wanted to die after that I would find a place where I could end my life in peace with minimal interference from others and my life would end. But I don't have any desire to die so it's not really relevant.

[TheRocketSurgeon]

My heart goes out to all of you who have wrestled with suicidal thoughts.

I've never felt that way. I have been through some of the most horrendous stuff it's possible for a human being to go through, short of dying (and I've come close to that, a couple of times), but I've never felt an impulse to end it all.

Even the bad stuff in life is part of the adventure. I'm fascinated to know what's next, for my day and for the world.

I was born in 1976, started forming serious memories by 1980. In that time, I've seen so many amazing inventions, from the cellular smartphone, to the polymerase chain reaction, to the sportbike, to the internet and high speed computers... I could go on for pages on ways our lives have changed for the better.

I've seen the two major military powers on the globe forget the Sicilian's First Rule in The Princess Bride, and get themselves involved in land wars in Asia. We visited Pluto and half a dozen other objects in our Solar System. We put rovers on Mars and beamed back HDTV. We made HDTV! We flew and finally retired the Space Shuttle. We sequenced our genome. We found Neandertal DNA.

I watched my racist-as-hell country elect a minority as President.

This life is amazing, and though I have sadness over horrible things I see and/or experience, and "traps" of thought that I must work to avoid or get out of (like any intelligent person who pays attention to what's going on), in general I am just happy that I am alive. Not only alive, but in an age when we are making the greatest breakthroughs of scientific discovery in the history of the human race.

[Chad32]

Obvious title is obvious.
The answer is not cookies, and no suprise, it's not even waffles.
Nor shall it be pizza, and pizza shall it not be.
For those who don't get it: what is your purpose in life? Why have you not killed yourself yet?

Food is a large part of my personal purpose. I have people I care about, and enjoy visiting them. I'm trying to get the most fun out of my life, while minimizing the pain, and I think I've been reasonably successful. Ironically the times I've been screwed over the most seem to be the times when I've been nicer to people than they deserve.

It's a personal question, and we can be sure tha the majority of people who remain alive have found their own reasons for not killing themselves. Some people like to think this is some deep, unanswerable question that you could spend a lifetime answering. Partly because they think there will be some higher meaning that pertains to everyone at once. I think it's a simple, personal question that most people already have the answer to.