You have been denied your being. The actual stuff you are made of has been denied to you. What ever has been that wasn't something to somebody? If nobody else than just the god that you imagine is sitting watching dead stuff to make it keep being? You are what keeps history alive. The comet's tail of now, without you, without us, there literally is nothing.
You may think that you need to make a point in order to speak. And you should make a point if you can. But don't assume that point-making is the only kind of speaking there is. People who seek the truth very carefully--scholars, scientists, journalists--know better than anyone that there are moments of clarity, not one point that can be made. Just because you don't know everything, does not mean that you know nothing.
In English we tend to forget the metaphors behind words. English is such a mashup of different languages, unless you speak Latin based languages and German, it's easy to forget that words are like sensory onomatopoeia; they are an ur metaphor in which meaning feels like what a word sounds like, and sounds of course play off of each other like harmony and cacaphony. Over generations as words are passed down, one can utter words and lose the feeling behind them.
Think about the word "Extrapolate." Extra, pol, ate. Out of, political/ppl, make. Now think about the phrase, "The Physical Universe Is Always Extrapolated." The physical universe is made out of the people. It feels different to break it down that way, right? And more importantly, it sounds plausible. Otherwise, the original wording can feel like it means that each individual invents the physical universe for himself. These two meaning are essentially total opposite statements about the mind body relationship, in terms of primacy.
Before one can even entertain the question about purpose in life, it is necessary to entertain the formal question about human freedom. Because without choice, there really is no point in musing about what one ought to do and how one ought to live. There's a lot of oughts that get inserted top down, by a force that feels like an occupying army at times, one wants to scream "I HAD NO CHOICE." And some people might be right about that. The oughts that predominate, I think, are hard work and responsibility.
The only glitch with the predominant schema of the physical universe, is that it seems at odds with the possibility of choice, and at odds with language usage in general. You may know somebody who is on a shitload of psychiatric drugs. You may not know anybody on psychiatric drugs, but for scores of poor folks on social security disability, it's crucial to get a diagnosis like "Bipolar" in order to receive government assistance. This is just one example, which shows how the worldview that the mind is primarily physical dominates our time. And of course, the mind is physical, sometimes terrifyingly so.
Think about that word. Bipolar. Bi, pol, ar. Is it really so crazy to swing wildly from one pole to another, when daily you are asked to believe that you are both free and floating in the crest? But when is now? What happened to now? Slippery, slippery, Now. How many people are truly manic depressive, where a physical glitch caused their brains to produce intoxicating and toxic chemicals, like a drug dealer living inside the mind? And how many people are just hopped up on sugar, the poor man's cocaine, with sour bellies clogged by fiberless diets consisting mostly of legal drugs?
What would the schema need to look like for the universe to harmonize with the mind? Clearly freedom would need to be primary, or just as primary, as the physical world itself, without slipping into the fool's paradise of individual selfhood projecting the world to itself. One day, as I danced into the morning hours in the courtyard of a warehouse in Bushwick, it hit me. The world is not made up of things, it is made up of relationships. Nodes in tension forming networks of significance. Aspects of the same Being, of which the physical version is one, like an unfathomably dense layered harmony, so dense it weighs nothing at all.
As I danced with my theoretical body, weighing heavy on my flighty mind, I thought: This is what I need to do to feel. This is how my friends and I need to jack up our minds to still have a meaningful moment, despite our exhaustion and lack of time
Friendship can lose the feeling behind the meaning. Friends can be chalked up to tools in a world that each individual projects for himself. This is a tragedy, but it can be papered over.
Being a mom or a dad is real. Too fucking real. Wonderfully, redeemingly real. Why? Because once you're a mom you can never erase it. Once you're a dad you can never erase it. You will be good or bad at your role but it is your skin, whether you choose to let it change you, or use it as an excuse to stay the same. It may seem like the physicality of DNA and torn vaginas is what makes it real, but it isn't. We people choose to make laws about childcare. We choose to explore and explain the mystery of DNA.
If purpose can be extrapolated from Being, it is about degrees of reality. And if Being consists of (human) relationships, reality is the degree to which your human relationships are strong, not necessarily hard work or sacrifice. By placing primacy on wealth, one can literally lose the whole world. I feel it. I feel the Gregorian chants of a thousand dim flames, lurching and moaning for love, community, mommy and daddy. They come from the offices, the streets, the graveyards, the absconding backside of the 3D virtual reality, which I am only sure exists, because you say you feel it too.