We have reached a solid brick wall. Painted clearly across this wall, are the questions; “What is our purpose on Earth? Why are we here?”

These are the rhetorical questions we often find ourselves asking. But why is it that many people have no answer? I can remember a few years ago when I was around 13 or 14, I asked my teacher what the answer to these questions were. She kind of laughed at me and said, “There are no answers to these questions. No-one will ever know.” My name is Brady Robards and today I would like to take a shot at answering these big questions, the ones we ask ourselves when we aren’t feeling on top of the world, when we seem oh so far from the light at the end of the tunnel.

Maybe we are here to strive - to aim for that which is just beyond our reach, to endeavour for that which is just outside our sphere of tangibility. What if our purpose here on Earth is to be continuously driven to achieve a goal? When we think of the best examples of humanity, we imagine people like Mahatma Ghandi, Amelia Earhart, Albert Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt and Martin Luther King. All of these people achieved great things, because they had a goal - a dream, a purpose, a vision. These are not the only people we admire for their drive however, every day it warms our hearts to hear of people who set their minds to something and eventually achieve it. Every day these people fill our lives. Take for example mothers and fathers. What greater goal could there be than to bring new life into the world? Some may argue that this is our actual purpose on Earth. But that doesn’t separate us from everything else living on our planet. It doesn’t distinguish us or satisfy our seemingly insatiable curiosity regarding our existence. It was some stroke of luck that apes started walking on two legs, freeing up their hands to perform more intricate actions. From here, our brains evolved to accommodate our new found skills subsequently starting a chain reaction leading to our current state of evolution. In this state we are unique. Medicine, technology and society insulate us from selection pressures, subsequently removing the human species from the evolutionary cycle. It is this uniqueness that leaves us without a purpose as definitive as other life on Earth. Survival, reproduction and continuation of the species still consume a great proportion of our lives, but it is no longer the driving force which brings about success, achievement and meaning to our lives. Rather, we look beyond the basic and into the more complex to fulfil our great potential to simply think - to analyse, deconstruct, ponder, imagine.

This potential to go beyond our basic requirement of survival has enabled us to invent such things as culture, religion, wisdom and love. No longer does our ‘mandate of existence’ deal solely with survival and continuation of the species. We have evolved beyond this fundamental programming running all life. It is through this expansion that we come to what seems to be a solid brick wall. Painted clearly across this wall, are the questions; “What is our purpose on Earth? Why are we here?”

Let’s say we are here to strive and to better ourselves. How can we prove this? How can we validate this answer? Quite simply we can look at what we have achieved so far by striving and pursuing our dreams. We have built cities using our organizational skills. We have cultivated crops and tendered livestock producing the most effective ways to provide food to the masses. We have created intricate and complex religions and doctrines dealing with ethics, morality and social standards by which we can steer our lives. Page by page, word by word, letter by letter, we have written thousands upon thousands of libraries full of books passing wisdom and knowledge from age to age. As we ascend into the digital age, our world becomes smaller and our potential greater. We have invented and created countless things and processes which allow us to achieve whatever we put our minds to.

Some would argue that we are moving into an unnatural age and that the results of our dreams and goals taint what is ‘good’ and ‘natural’. However, ever since the people of Earth created fire, collected food, traded goods, wrote a letter or even worshipped a god – we have been defying nature. Long ago did we leave behind the humble beginnings that nature provided us. Long ago, we strove for something greater. Today we continue to strive. Our purpose here is to strive.

So the next time you hit what seems to be a solid brick wall with the clearly painted questions; “What is our purpose on Earth? Why are we here?” remember what I have said. There are no boundaries; there are no adversities we cannot over come. Dare to dream and be human enough to strive.

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Ha, you actually read it. You must be pretty bored. Thanks!