It's okay folks - I'm not depressed : )

However, on one thread I recently made a comment about the possibility that propagation of our species is the only point to existence, and just now I picked up my copy of Bill Bryson's, "A Short History of Nearly Everything" in which he ponders the humble existence of lichen:

"Like most things that thrive in harsh environments, lichens are slow growing. It may take a lichen more than half a century to attain the dimensions of a shirt button. Those the size of dinner plates, writes David Attenborough, are therefore "likely to be thousands of years old". It would be hard to imagine a less fulfilling existence. "They simply exist," Attenborough adds, "testifying to the moving fact that life even at its simplest level occurs, apparently, for its own sake."
It is easy to overlook this thought that life just is. As humans we are inclined to feel that life must have a point. We have plans, aspirations and desires. We want to take constant advantage of all the intoxicating existence we've been endowed with. But what's life to a lichen? Yet its impulse to exist, to be, is every bit as strong as ours - arguably even stronger...."

Our intellect tells us that all this "life" must have a point. I wonder if the point for us is any different to that of lichen?

Short answer: "no". Longer one to follow later.

This could be a very interesting thread, or it could fizzle out very quickly under the weight of "certainty" that seems to be in abundance on this forum.

My personal take is that yes, we are lichen. Our intellect, as Poirot describes it, leads us to want, very much, that there is some kind of reason behind our existence.

Doesn't make it true, though.

We have a significant benefit over lichen, though. We have the capacity to be happy that we are alive, rather than just being.

That's the bit I like.

Very weighty matter.

I agree with the others.

No, there is no meaning to life, it just seems that way, because all the people who weren't driven by a strong sense of purpose to survive and reproduce, died out, leaving only the surviving and reproducing ones flying around like blue-arsed flies.

Also the illusion is made worse by the fact that humans' particular ecological trick is to think up ad hoc solutions to practical problems, to think in chains of reasoning reflecting cause and effect, and thus to make our living. So when we aren't spending our time on such practical problems, we tend to think that "life, the universe and everything" itself must have a purpose, just as living beings do. But it doesn't.

Each has to make up his own meaning to life as he thinks best. There are number of bespoke belief systems that you can buy off the rack, as, your Buddhism, your Christianity, your Islam, and so on. But these ready-made ones, for some reason, seem to love to be miserable and censorious. Life is suffering. Life is sin. Life is submission.
And so on. None of them seem to embrace peaceably enjoying life as a free gift for itself. Why this simple but good philosophy hath not recommended itself to more of the sages is a thing mysterious to me.

http://www.oshoquotes.net/category/osho-quotes-on-life/

There you go, Poirot. Houllie is going to have to read
this stuff, if he is going to be the new Bhagwan apprentice :)

I can only speak for myself.

Does my life have some cosmic significance?

I doubt it.

But my life has meaning to me. I enjoy my life.

I hope it has meaning to those around me as their lives have to me.

I even like to think I sometimes bring a bit of fun into the lives of OLO posters. I suspect OUG enjoys the opportunity I give him for a bit of a rant every now and then :-)

And I enjoy reading some of your posts.