What the f*ck should you do with your life?

For many, this question is rather easy: "I won't think about it."

And, while this is the most reasonable strategic decision you can make regarding this question, it also is a decision that requires you to just let your hands off the steering wheel. But if you want to drive with direction, you have to go plan B.

Now, where you have assumed control of the wheel, you need to find a way, a destination to navigate toward. Unfortunately, I have to tell you, that it's not a "go to there and be done" type of journey you are embarking on. Even the travel to find the destination is a convoluted and challenging one, and only once you got there, you can finally drive toward your actual destination.

The good news is, this write-up is intended to help you with the former - more precisely, I composed this to help myself to truly understand where I want to go, offering you to follow my logic in case it helps you.

Ready? Let's go.

Axioms

The first thing, is to determine what you can guarantee. This will clear your mind on what you actually have to take into consideration and build the foundation on which you can take the final decision.

Let's get right started:

1. Your time is finite

   The question of "what to do with life" is really more a question of "what to do with time". Maybe, this doesn't reframe the problem for you, but thinking in terms of time really helped me: There is a finite amount of things you can do, and you can only do "one" thing at a time, resulting in an opportunity cost whenever you determine to do something else. The first deduction we can achieve from this is, that whenever you take a decision to not take a decision / not directing your attention to any specific goal, you have maximum opportunity cost. Whenever you do something with no sense of purpose, direction, or intentionally, you are absolutely wasting that time. Conclusion: have a clear goal in mind at all times. Now this goal can also simply be to find a goal, like I have with the contemplation & writing of this, but at least you have clear intent to spend time with what is is you decide.

   Now, while you can make an argument for immortality, you can explore the infinity argument on how that doesn't change facts.

2. There is no absolute purpose

   You can go in circles on that, but the chances of you determining there is a 'god-given'/'absolute' meaning to life are non-existent. There is no inherent meaning.

   For me - a very rational person - it helped to draw an analogy to the last digit of PI. There is none. That's the best answer rational mathematics can give, just accept that.

   If your a theist and operating under the assumption, that there is more to life after death, even that does not imply meaning. What dictates the meaning of post-death life? Why would that epoch suddenly have meaning. Once more, if it's about immortality, the same infinity argument applies.

3. You have a biological body

   This is in line with number four, in that there are just naturally evolved systems in place that reward and punish certain behavior. You can chose to ignore them, but they will feed you and incentivize you to act in specific ways. Keep that in mind when making your decision.

4. You are configured

   You already have values, believes, and behaviors. That's not bad, that's not good, but it is. This means, while you cannot find an absolutely correct use for your life, you cannot even find an irrational one. While one was raised to want to become the richest man alive, the other believes he should develop space rockets to make us multi-planetary. Now it's important to elaborate on this point, because it has a lot lot lot of implications in point five.

5. Your goal need not, and probably won't be permanent

   You will live life, and adjust on where exactly you want to move. And that is completely fine. The process of finding your goal is more like an iterative meta-journey. You travel while finding out where you want to travel. The good part is, in most cases your adjustments will become smaller and smaller. In other words, you are now selecting the foundation, then you'll chose the shape, material, color, then interior. But let's continue by determining the foundation first.

Options

Awesome, now that we have spent a lot of time working on our axioms, we understand which conditions influence our decision and the purpose of life operates. But that has not brought us closer to actually finding ours. And this is where it gets very introspective. There are a lot of neologisms for a lack of a better education here.

It is very important to elaborate on axiom 4:

• Just moving with the stream of your upbringing/society is 100% fine if it works for you. There is no reason to over-complicate things, and you can just embrace your configuration in full.
• Killing yourself is equally justified as any other decision. However, it is highly unlikely to be the best decision for you. Referring to axiom 1, the decision of suicide is maximizing opportunity cost not for the moment, but for the entire time you have. Keeping in mind that the journey is a rather long one until you get to your 'life destination', the perspective on suicide you have at the moment might not be the same that you have 2 steps further down your journey, yet should it be, the option is persistent.
• You can reshape life to anything. You could decide your goal is wealth, just as much as you could aim for family and friendship. Not your thing? How about music? Not my favorite, but anarchy is an option. Mass murderer? There is a way for you. And while the last two propositions are socially disregarded, they can be equally justified. However, you can read here, on why you might want to decide against them.

Since we now understand we can and should take a decision, we have to know what the options are. I have enlisted all the ones I could find below, but maybe you can think of a way to live life I couldn't come up with.

• Indeterminism

  My least favorite as already outlined in axiom 1. Not taking a decision on what your decision is ironically a decision in itself. Simply exist with no sense of direction, consume uselessly, exist impactless, live irrelevant. A bold choice.

• Hedonism

  An absolute philosophical classic, the pursuit of pleasure. Quite obvious, simply do the things that bring you happiness, joy, content, or whatever you call it. Basically, it's fully embracing axiom 7 and simply letting bodily dictations direct your life. Once more, not more or less valuable that other options, but simply one of the most straight forward ones.

• Societism

  Follow the crowd. This comes in a few special flavors, but in a nutshell, nature is a self structuring system that got us into this mess in the first place. Why not simply swim within those structures and live in the way that your parents and social connections nurtured you to operate in. Mostly, that means getting your 9/5 job, marrying, having children, retiring, and then passing. An easy option that saves you a lot of trouble.

• Monetism

  A flavor of societism, the pursuit of monetary gains. Boost your net worth, make bank, buy expensive stuff. Probably a lot will have this incorporated to a certain extend.

• Fameism

  Another flavor of societism, the pursuit of fame. Define yourself through how many people know you, how many lives you impact, but also what people think of you. Social media as an entirely heavily cultivates fameism for better or worse.

• Relationism

  Another flavor of societism, the pursuit of people. Care of your family, love your love relationship, appreciate your friends.

• Passionism

  A pretty cool one to be fair - follow your drive. There are two conditions to this philosophy: you have a passion/purpose/drive: awesome, act on it and excel. You don't have one: explore as many options as possible and find your passion. The nice part on this is, it gives you an exceptional sense of purpose and direction in life, as you'll live in a constant state of flow.

• Impactism

  A flavor of passoinism - try to leave a positive impact on the world. Cure cancer, fight inequity, solve the Rieman hypothesis. Just passionately go for what could touch many more lives than your own.

• Assimilism

  Also quite mainstream and related to passionism. Try to have as many experiences as possible. Travel the world, meet people, be rich, be poor, be loved, be hated. Just try to absorb as many emprises out in the world as possible.

• Antism

  Work actively against all established. Be a renegade, an anarchist, an outcast, a hippie. All just different manifestations of different parts of the spectrum. Basically, you're steering in the opposite direction of the societist, by rejecting socity. Before deciding for this option, I'd consult with a therapist to ensure you're not simply doing this as part of an unclosed wound or bad experience that put you in this position, but if it turns out it's true conviction, this could be your path.

• Secludism

  Reject society, but keep it to yourself. Build a self-sustaining hut in the forest. Live day by day in solitude and focus on yourself.

• Terminism

  Self destruciton. Rejection of life and the significance of time, and premature termination of all of live. A possibly enormous opportunity cost, but, if rationally and un-impulsive, a fair option.

• BYOB (Bring Your Own Bible)

  While the above 'philosophies' are interesting hotspots, you can clearly customize, mix-match, or completely deviate from the above. You can define your own rule-set of what constitutes priories and rankings, but, this will probably be such an endeavour, that you will default to one of the above and just make some tweaks here and there.

Conclusion

I, and maybe you, thought that the philosophical venture into the meaning of life would be far more expansive. To me, it turned out rather disappointing to see that there is no glorious answer that outshines all of them. Effectively, it's like in the matrix - society is a machine, and the ones aiming to escape the system are also part of the system. And while you can clearly make decisions here and there, overall, your life will fall into a pretty predictable category - no way around that.

But this is not the end of the journey. Once you chose a path to walk, you have to truly decide where the path starts and where it ends. Is this particular action aligned with your decided goal?

And then when you define parts of the path, you have to commit to act on them. You know where you want to go, so don't make excuses to derail.

So, what can you do? Nothing much. You just have to pick you preferable philosophy. However, I have one last option on the table. Here is the essay defining my own personal choice