What Are We Doing Here? Five Answers (+ Mine)

What are we doing here?

This question has been asked since the beginning of time—by monks, nuns, philosophers, therapists, and teenagers with the munchies at 2 a.m.—and, if you’re reading this, probably you at some point in your life.

Are we here to grow? To suffer? To achieve? To awaken? To love?

Different thinkers have offered different answers. Here are five takes that resonate with me. And then I’ll tell you where I’m landing on this one lately.

Carl Jung: Become Who You Actually Are

Jung believed the purpose of life is individuation—becoming whole.

Not perfectly healed. Not successful. Not impressive.

Whole.

In Jungian terms, that means facing your shadow, integrating the parts of yourself you’d rather not admit to, and gradually becoming more fully yourself. Less pretending you’re enlightened. And more admitting you get annoyed when someone takes the last good parking spot.

As he put it, “The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.”

Clarissa Pinkola Estés: Don’t Lose Your Wild Soul

Estés suggests that the purpose of life is to protect what is wild, intuitive, cyclical, and alive within the soul.

Our lives lose their juju when we stop listening to our inner compass, numb out, or bend ourselves to fit everyone else’s expectations. Life deepens and becomes richer when we stay true to our inner knowing, even when it’s inconvenient or uncomfortable.

“The wild soul,” Estés says, “is the one who knows the way.”

Alan Watts: You’re Already Doing It

Philosopher Alan Watts had zero patience for the idea that life is a sad, stoic march toward some final reward.

One of my all-time favorite Watts quotes: “The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple.”

He often compared life to music or dance, where the point isn’t to get to the end, but simply to play the notes and participate in the flow.

Simone de Beauvoir: Freedom and Responsibility

De Beauvoir had a more existential take: there’s no pre-written script. No cosmic instruction manual.

In The Ethics of Ambiguity, she wrote that humans are fundamentally free. In other words: we get to choose how we respond to life and who we are within it. But because we live among others, how we use that freedom matters. A meaningful life, she argued, is one that supports the freedom of others as well.

Viktor Frankl: Meaning

Viktor Frankl believed the primary human drive is the search for meaning.

After surviving the Holocaust, he concluded that even in unimaginable suffering, we retain one key freedom: our attitude. We may not control what happens, but we can decide how we respond—and whether we find meaning in the experience.

As he put it, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.”

My Take: Flow. But the Real Kind.

If you asked me today, I’d say: I don’t know what the purpose of life is. I don’t think anyone does.

But I do think feeling truly fulfilled has something to do with a combination of the ideas above: facing our fears and shadows to become our most authentic, individuated selves (Jung), following our inner knowing (Estés), choosing how we respond to life (Frankl)—including how we connect with others (de Beauvoir)—and dancing with life’s twists and turns, simply experiencing what it means to be alive (Watts).

All of which fall under the umbrella of what I call: flow.

Not the shiny, Instagram, “everything is aligned and effortless” joy-and-light version.

But the kind that makes room for Jung’s inner dragons and Frankl’s unimaginable suffering—the boulders, the rapids, the seasons of darkness, loss, and disorientation. The identity collapses. The winters.

The kind that doesn’t require clarity or perfectly responding to life all the time—and leaves room for radical self-kindness when the obstacles make you want to punch a wall.

I call it flow not because it’s easy.

But because, like a river, everything belongs.

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