Asklemmy

I'd first ask you to define happiness.

Temporary pleasures will always be fleeting, unreliable, and fraught with danger. Drugs and alcohol feel great in the moment, for example. So does eating junk food and watching TV. But we all know the problems with these things.

Is happiness the pleasure brought by fulfilling hobbies? That's probably a little more productive, but also will never be continuous. And often, if you try to make that your entire life, it loses its joy. The recreation is often the joyful part.

Personally for me, my interactions with patients and being able to use my intellect to help people medically is so deeply satisfying that I'm motivated to go to work despite there being so many things to hate about my job. So that's an interesting wrinkle on the idea of happiness.

I'm not really trying to get at an answer here. We just had a whole meditation retreat at my church about this exact topic: What is the purpose of life? But maybe some ideas to help you clarify your own thoughts about the subject.

Personally the point to life for me is to find something I love and add to that space. I love music, so my purpose in life is to make music, be that playing live or mixing and mastering or composing songs or recording stuff. It's something I dream about, even though I already do some of these things.

But I'm just one guy. My personal subcribed to philosophy is absurdism. Nothing has meaning unless I give it meaning, so fuck you Im going to eat a pineapple with chopsticks.

The point to life is whatever you want it to be. If you need help finding that I would try tap into what you would love to create or what you would like to achieve.

Maybe flip it around? The point of unhappiness (or dissatisfaction) is to get the organism to change up what it's doing; to locate new goals and pursue them. That can mean engaging with others in different ways than you did before.

If you're satisfied, you mostly stick with what you're doing already. (Which might include seeking novelty as well.) If you're unsatisfied, you may be ready to ditch your current situation for a new one as soon as one comes up.

Dementia in elders is really freakin' sad. But there's a lot of difference in people's experience of it. I happen to know two people in their 70s suffering dementia, who have very different levels of unhappiness. (They also live in rather different situations, although both are in relatively rural settings. Both live with a spouse and with supportive neighbors.)

One is largely satisfied and comfortable; the other is often pissed off and frustrated. This seems to have a lot to do with what their attitudes and social interactions were like before the dementia set in.

As a hedonist my answer is yes. Life doesn't have an actual point. It wasn't "made" on purpose but because it got the chance. What you make of it is your decision but since we have a brain that rewards us and a nociception that punishes us depending on how we use our life I suggest you choose your own purpose. Mine is to be happy. Even when I'm altruistic I'm secretly egoistic because I feel better when my environment feels good too.

Consider reading "Existentialism is a Humanism"

That's a pretty high bar. In fact exaggerated focus on "am I happy" can sort of fuck you up. Focusing on what you appreciate is supposed to be better and make you happier. The cliché is "the meaning of life is to give life meaning" which is disgustingly Hallmark, but still has a fair point. Just do whatever - a good idea is to not get too existential if you can avoid it.

Not all life can have meaning or greater purpose, that happens in fiction mostly anyway.

Find things that make you comfortable, content and feel safe, and fill your life with them. It's ok to just be.

no the purpose of life is to exist

The only purpose to life is to live it. Beyond that, you have to find the meaning that suits you for yourself.

No. Happiness is nice, when you have it, but you have to create meaning in life.

And purpose? You can have a purpose but Life in general does not.

The purpose of life is to not die.

There is no inherent purpose.

The purpose of human life is to submit ourselves to the Idea.