What is the purpose of our lives? Why are you alive?

 The purpose of our lives is to reawaken our dormant love of God and enter into a direct relationship with Him. It is not a relationship that has to be fabricated, it already exists, but we have to uncover it.

Why we are alive is because we have no choice. Life is eternal but material bodies are temporary. So the living entity changes from one body to another in a cycle of birth and death. Birth and death refer to our physical bodies, not the eternal spirit soul within the body.

Those of us in the material world are alive to enjoy sense-gratification through the body. It has a gross aspect of indulging the senses directly, and a subtle aspect of enjoying profit, adoration, and distinction. In the subtle aspect our enjoyment is extended through our families/loved ones, our friends, our community, up to the national level. Millions of citizens in a country which wins a world cup will rejoice and dance in the streets. For most of them, nothing in their lives will change as a result, but they are happy that their country had the distinction of winning.

All the different types of enjoyment in the material world are poor substitutes for our loving relationship with the Lord. They are always limited, temporary and imperfect. What we want is unlimited, never-ending, perfect enjoyment. That is only to be had in a relationship with the Supreme Being and that’s the reason why we exist. Having lost that relationship, the only important purpose in life is to reawaken it.

As detailed in Srimad Bhagavatam:

The supreme occupation [dharma] for all humanity is that by which men can attain to loving devotional service unto the transcendent Lord. Such devotional service must be unmotivated and uninterrupted to completely satisfy the self. SB 1.2.6

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