I would like you to think about your life and your purpose in it. What are you aiming to achieve here, living for a split second on the cosmic time scale? How will your life affect the lives of others and the planet on which you live? Are you even looking for a purpose?
We are born knowing nothing of this world. Over our first years we take in information about our surroundings and build our senses. In our youth we build our emotions and connections with others of our species. And over the first 20 years we learn about technology and history and how to communicate this, as our forefathers did with us, to the next generations.
Then, you start work. There are three kinds of work you can do in life. Firstly, you can be a slave to others. This is the kind of job where you follow a monotonous routine given to you by your employers. Your day consists of a ritualized regime serving the needs of your company. This is the least fulfilling of jobs.
Secondly, there is service. This work consists of taking your own decisions in providing a service to others. This can include work as an entrepreneur or a business man or a doctor diagnosing people. In a service job, your brain is used in solving problems that are immediate and at hand. This can be a fulfilling job if what you aim for is the satisfaction of the present.
Lastly, there is the work of written legacy. This is the most fulfilling of jobs and has the most impact on society. A job that deals with written legacy includes any work in which you come up with new and innovative ideas that may be passed down the generations to alter the lives of other people. This is usually done by passing on what you discover in written form. Our ancestors first began their written legacy by inventing language. Some time after this, mathematics was invented, which was later used to understand and write about physics. Chemistry was also a new form of written legacy describing the material world.
Every job that entails the discovery of something new that may affect society can be considered as legacy. A person that leaves part of his life's work in the collective legacy can feel as if he had purpose in life.
Science is an example of a work entailing written legacy. Science is a treasure trove of knowledge in which discoveries are written down and shared with society. This, however, does not make science the only meaningful field of work. Any type of work, from slave work to service, to low profile written legacy, can be promoted to a more fulfilling job.
A doctor providing service can come up with innovative ways to treat patients and leave a legacy behind. A person working in a factory may come up with an idea for a new product. What we leave behind when we die will be the product of our work's legacy. A slave's life may have little impact on our planet. To dream in leaving behind a legacy may give your purpose to live.
This, of course, does not mean that a slave worker may not have purpose. His purpose may be to serve as a slave in order to sustain his family. A person that is writing down a legacy, on the other hand, may not have a purpose still. However, it is far more likely for a person to find purpose in life if he realizes that what he does in a large part of this life is going to affect society.
For when a person dies, what he leaves behind are memories of his life that will slowly fade with the passing of time. But when a person leaves behind a legacy, his memory may be forgotten, but his legacy will ripple through the ages in our society for countless years to come.
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