What do we live for and what is our purpose in life?

I remember talking with my brother a few days after he got married in Japan. He told me he was saving everything he could for this new kid that he was bringing into the world. Now, this is a wonderful thing. Don’t get me wrong. Bringing a new life into the world and actually being prepared for it? Awesome. That kid is going to be OK. He’ll teach him/her some life lessons and now has someone who will throw his ass in an assisted living home. And the cycle will repeat. (Nah, just kidding. Japanese don’t do that to each other… Right?)

It made me think – what am I doing? Is this all there is to life? Right now my fiancé and I are saving for the wedding. After that, we save for what? A vacation? Is that all I have to live for after this? You know that’s what retirement is, right? Just a long and final vacation.

OK so that is depressing. But it gets more so. Check this out: how do we amass all this money for a long vacation? We do this by working ourselves to death. I currently run with two jobs and I’m taking a test that will get me more money in the future. On the outside, people congratulate me for working so hard. But what is the opportunity cost? Life. I miss out on life events no matter how small. From little parties to birthday celebrations. Who hasn’t used work as the excuse to miss out on an experience? And what if you don’t like doing what you do? You become miserable.

Is the answer finding something you like to do? Maybe. But I think I want to explore another option…

Maybe experience is the answer to life. Maybe all these little video games got the idea wrong. In RPG’s we continually gain experience and level up. We keep leveling up because we want to be strong enough to beat the game, have bragging rights or whatnot. But guess what happened? Somewhere along the line gaining experience has become a time sink and grind. Much like work, we grind and grind hoping that the countless hours we spent killing dragons will amount to some great feat like saving the world. Guess what? In real life, we don’t have all this experience and do something really wonderful with it. Usually, we just die. Maybe we impart some of this knowledge on future generations, but at the end of it all we get no princess, no congratulations, or cake. We get dead.

Now how depressing is that? So maybe at the end of the day, we should re-think our lives. Watch “Click,” or maybe even “Yes Man.” Or maybe step back from it all and re-watch American Beauty. Think about it a little bit and maybe find an answer. Or just continue to grind away.

A mid-life crisis and I’m not even 30. Weak.