Consciousness is Life’s Purpose

I really do believe that trite, lazy throw away comment: “it will all work out in the end.”

And the way it works out is: you've had a life.

However long or short, you have had an experience.

Your particular collection of elements and molecules, the things that make you ‘you’ - have been drawn together and you've lived a life.

All the physical stuff has combined to create you: one specific, thinking, feeling version of life.

Hopefully, you've experienced love - and that's the top and bottom of it. Perhaps some people experience more love than others, or maybe some just have more appreciation of it than others.

And of course there are different kinds of love.

But the whole point is, we’re made from stardust which is beautiful and unfathomable really, starting from a tiny, tiny speck which exploded into the universe and all these different elements that formed over time. Miraculously, simple aggregates of matter coalesced into things that could reproduce and eventually things that could think and then ultimately things that can feel emotions and - finally - love.

Image: NASA-JPL/Caltech; image processing by IPAC/Robert Hurt - streams of dust flowing toward the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Andromeda Galaxy

I feel that in the world of living things - all of nature - the highest experience it is possible to have is consciousness. And isn't the ultimate version of consciousness love?

And when it's all done and dusted - when we die - we don't know if there's any consciousness left.

But, if during our time of being conscious, we have experienced love in some form or another, then we've had the highest experience it’s possible to have. And I think that's the closest thing I have to a philosophy.

All the different ways of showing love surround us every day - sometimes, it’s experiencing, or showing, or witnessing just a little bit of kindness.

Being considerate of someone and cutting them a bit of slack if you see they're struggling. Or you help them out in some small way, or you simply don't get in the way of them doing what they feel is important. Or you assist them in doing stuff that they need help with.

To me, all of these show different forms of love.

The Beatles said it best: “All You Need Is Love!”

Perhaps there’s a hierarchy: the romantic love you have for your spouse, the parental love for your children, the camaraderie of friends and siblings. At it’s simplest, it’s wanting good things for other people.

That’s what it's all about, I think.

This probably won't make sense to anybody else. But I see all sorts of behaviour as people trying to show love, even if that’s not the word they might choose. For some people, their love shows as their care for the environment - they go out litter picking. Or they only use public transport - they don't own a car, even though it would be much more convenient for them if they did - they consider all the environmental impacts that they have in their day-to-day living.

That's a kind of love.

I feel that we all have a very deep seated need to experience love in one way or another. Once we’ve been able to show love, or receive it, we’ve fulfilled the purpose our component cosmic parts were put together for.