I’ve come to believe that the purpose of life is to have experiences. Why do people read fiction and non-fiction, watch movies, go on trips, eat at restaurants? Everything we do, of our own volition, is in the pursuit of an experience. Even in things we do not want to do we have experiences. Things we have experienced one hundred times, we have not experienced one hundred and one times yet until we decide to do it yet again, or it is done to us.
We set goals in life or we do not set goals. Either way, there will be an experience: one in achieving the goal and one in not achieving a goal we never thought to set. Some chase new experiences and gain a thrill or great disappointment. Some rarely experience anything new yet become thrilled or disappointed from the familiar.
Others accumulate objects and have the experience of possessing many accumulated objects. Many do not posses many objects at all and have the experience of not having many objects.
Some have children and raise families, others experience a solitary life. There are those with long lives filled with innumerable experiences and there many who scarcely experienced life at all.
In the end everyone will look back on a life of experiences. Actions, accumulations, thoughts, words, deeds, what was done or not done, what we have done to others and how me made them feel will accumulate into one aggregated life experience.
I wonder if experiences, thoughts and feelings make some sort of mark in the universe. Is there a cosmic recorder somewhere that accompanies a greater divine symphony or our our lives no more significant than the squeak of a mouse when exterminated by the cat?
I prefer the pleasurable experience although sometimes pleasure comes in self denial. I enjoy reflecting on the mundane experience as well as extraordinary. I am grateful that I exist and that everyday is full of experiences.
