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Does everyone feel like they've figured out their purpose in life? Does anyone feel like they haven't figured it out?

Real question:
How significant is understanding your purpose, do you think?
Can you really begin to grow without one?

Do you feel you exist for a specific function? Or do you feel like you just exist to drift aimlessly and arbitrarily through time?

I think everyone is absolutely perfect to run their gauntlet of obsticles in life, and thus, everyone has specific strengths and weaknesses pertaining to their purposes, imo.

Ever since I discovered my purpose, my spiritual evolution has been explosive.

I did an essay for a scholarship on the purpose in life a year and a half ago. It was interesting, and my thoughts have definitely changed since then. I said that we live for love. We are alive because of love, we keep living because we are looking for love (whether it be romantically or through friends and a community), and love is what keeps us alive.

of course, this being one of The Big Philosophical Questions, it is next to impossible to define and can be defined in numerous ways by numerous people, with each having their own interpretation. Yeah, I took philosophy last year.

I kinda figure that we each do have a role - we impact others lives just as others impact our lives. You could say it's fate - when you meet someone and become friends, when you learn from someone, when events occur and things happen and life goes on. We all have a path that is chosen for us - who we will meet, places we will go, when we will die. We all can choose our path - how we treat others, how we accept our fate, how we deal with everyday life. If I knew I were to die in a car crash tomorrow, and decided to stay home and far away from cars, I would trip down the stairs and break my neck. that shows how fate will stay in control, how things that are meant to happen will happen. But still, if you want to be a teacher and then decide to be a fashion designer instead, you can change that path.
Do I make sense? I need to have people in front of me listening so I can not take up so much space on a page and then I can see if they are 3nodding or confused ...you know? biggrin

I could say that that is my take on Purpose of Life, but that's only part-way. That explains my take on fate. so how about this. You are fated to meet certain people. your purpose in life can be more than one purpose... you can be there to help certain people, just as other people have the purpose to help you, teach you, etc. Sometimes you can find a pattern, a general desire that you have, that is your main purpose in life. EG - I love helping people. I like being able to teach people and help them understand. that is why I will study to be a teacher. That is my purpose in life - to learn, to help, to teach, to understand.
So basically, I'm saying that you can have a main purpose and smaller, specific purposes like to "help [person there]" and "stop [random girl] form doing this stupid thing" biggrin yeah?

Reading Viscerims posts I am reminded of a quote from Princess Mononoke " You can not alter your fate, you though rise to meet it if you wish." This goes along with the theory that Viscerim has presented. And I have to agree with this view point.

I have found, at least as thus far, my purpose is to find and maintain balance. Light and dark, mental and physical, Balance exists in all things right down to an atom. The perfect balance of push and pull cause electrons to orbit around the protons and neutrons. If there was and more or less push or pull the atom would implode in on itself or fly apart. This is balance, very simple yet immensely complex. I can't say I fully understand balance but I do know I feel it and try to be mindful of this feeling in everything I do.

Some personal beliefs of mine concerning fate. All opinion, please find no offense:

I find that fate is always calling, and one is always hearing it, but perhaps one doesn't know.

I find fate to be much like wind. It is always blowing you towards one thing, and even if you don't know what it is, you'll arrive sooner or later. In fact, looking at the wind won't lead to any clarity, but looking to where you've been steered away from, perhaps we can see where we are not headed, and looking to see where we're encouraged to go, perhaps we can learn how to arrive there promptly. Where we are is where we've been lead; there is no mistake. In a world where one's life can change in an instant, there is never enough reason to lose hope.

Understanding fate doesn't allow on to construct one's path, but rather, constructing one's path gives fate a language to speak to one in that one can understand.

Fate never wastes time - it all builds towards something. I often feel that I am aimlessly wandering, but I feel that we pass that same tree on the circular path over and over again because we're missing something altogether. Life likes to teach us hard lessons and punish us until we get it. We're not trying to get off the circular path; we're trying to understand what the tree is showing us. I feel that once we get the hint, the path changes. I've learned that life won't hesitate to reteach us a hard lesson we failed to learn the first time.

When I think of purpose, I don't try to figure out what I should be doing - instead, I try to focus on what it is I AM doing, what I'm ALWAYS doing, and what I've ALWAYS done.