Why Do I Exist?

I was talking to someone yesterday who was down, who said they were plagued with this question. At first it struck me as sad, I don't like seeing anyone I know depressed, but as the conversation progressed I became rather baffled and somewhat put off. Not by this person's feeling but by their inability or desire to take no action because of it.

Question: Why do I exist?

All pseudo-intellectual drug-experimenting undergraduates grapple with this question and perhaps in this uncertain and trying socio-political landscape despair and ennui and futility are seductive. But existential malaise has no real value, only has meaning as a momentary stop on the way to an actual destination or discovery. But its boring. Railing against aging, birth itself, existence, is petulant, immature. Sure, sometimes this feeling is natural, sometimes the pressures of life can be overwhelming, but this should be fleeting. It's not that surrendering to this idea, this void, this perspective, is weak it simply serves no purpose.

Answer: You do.

That's it. You do, so what now. Faith and spirituality can provide answers, purpose, and meaning but belief isn't for everyone, barring that it is up to us. Up to us to individually give our lives, life, meaning. And the thing is, perhaps existence is absurd but even so it retains meaning, retains whatever meaning we inject into and derive from it. Whether its a particular passion, family, friends, a profession, physical fitness, mental alacrity you name it. It can be anything and the glorious thing is we can dictate what it is.

Why do I exist? Pick a reason. Pick a purpose. If life is lived with meaning, it has meaning. And that can be something as lofty as spiritual enlightenment or as banal as good coffee. And it can be a myriad of those things, big and small.

The question is, in essence, immaterial. It's a non-starter. To quote Robin Williams paraphrasing Whitman:

O me! O life! of the questions of these recurring,
Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish;
What good amid these, O me, O life?

                                       Answer.
That you are here—that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.