Why Am I Here? Finding Purpose When Life Feels Meaningless
You're lying in bed at 3 AM. The question won't leave you alone: Why am I here? What's the point of any of this?
You're not alone. This question haunts millions. It shows up as depression, as existential dread, as that hollow feeling when everything looks fine on the outside but nothing feels right within.
What if there's an answer that doesn't require you to join a religion, adopt someone else's ideology, or pretend the question doesn't matter?
You Chose to Be Here
This is the central insight of the simulation perspective, as explored in the philosophical notes of Johannes: we are here for a reason — each of us has chosen to come into this reality.
Not chosen by a god. Not assigned by fate. Chosen by you.
If our reality is a simulation — a constructed experience entered willingly from a higher reality — then you walked into this life on purpose. You knew it would be hard. You knew you'd forget everything. You pressed start anyway.
That changes the question entirely. It's no longer "Why am I here?" — unanswerable, crushing. It becomes "What did I come here to find?" — personal, alive, worth pursuing.
Why You Can't Know Your Purpose (And Why That's the Point)
Here's the part that frustrates people: we can never know our purpose while we're here. If we could, it would shatter the illusion — like knowing the ending of a movie before watching it. The experience requires not-knowing.
But this isn't a cruel design. It's elegant.
If someone handed you a card at birth that said "Your purpose is X," you'd optimize for X. You'd skip everything that didn't serve it. You'd miss the detours that turn out to be the actual journey. You'd live a narrow life chasing a label instead of a full life discovering who you are.
Not knowing your purpose forces you to live — to explore, to try, to fail, to feel what resonates and what doesn't.
Three Kinds of Seekers
Johannes describes three types of people in relation to purpose:
Those who feel it naturally. They're driven by something they can't quite name. They create, build, help — and it energizes them. They don't need to intellectualize purpose; they live it.
Those who sense it vaguely. They feel pulled in certain directions but can't define where. Some things feel more right than others. They might pursue something meaningful for years, then lose the thread when circumstances change. Life feels heavy in those uncertain stretches.
Those who feel nothing. Days follow days without meaning. Beneath surface happiness lies a quiet dread: Is this it? Why am I even here? Life feels pointless, sometimes unbearable.
All three benefit from the same practice.
Presence: The Purpose-Finder
Not meditation retreats in Bali (though those can help). Not quitting your job to "find yourself" (though sometimes that's right). The practice is simpler and harder than both: being fully here, in whatever moment you're in.
When you're present — truly present — you can feel what matters to you. Not what you've been told should matter. Not what looks impressive. What actually resonates in the quiet of your direct experience.
Johannes' Note 11 offers a profound exercise: imagine yourself as a newborn, seeing everything for the first time. No possessions. No roles. No history. Just awareness meeting the world. From that emptiness, notice what draws you. What feels alive.
You don't have to renounce anything to practice this. Renunciation is not a shortcut to presence. Be present with your family. Be present at work. Be present in the mundane. That's where purpose reveals itself — not in dramatic gestures, but in the texture of your actual life.
Interaction Is Non-Negotiable
Here's something Johannes makes clear that solitary seekers often miss: interaction is necessarily part of our purpose here. If it weren't, we wouldn't have entered a reality filled with other conscious beings. We'd have chosen emptiness.
You're not here to meditate alone on a mountain forever. You're here to encounter others, to be changed by them, to change them. Your purpose — whatever it is — involves other people.
This means isolation, while sometimes necessary for rest, isn't the answer to meaninglessness. Connection is. Even clumsy, imperfect, awkward connection. Even the kind that hurts.
What If Life Is Just a Game?
Some people hear "life might be a simulation" and think: Then nothing matters.
Johannes turns this on its head: when your life in this reality eventually ends and you return to wherever you came from, how will you remember such a life? Would it have been a waste, or exactly what you wanted?
If life is a game, it's not a casual mobile game you play while bored. It's the most immersive, high-stakes, full-experience game imaginable. You signed up for the full run. You can't save and reload. Every choice is permanent.
The question isn't whether the game matters. It's whether you're playing it or letting it play you.
A Purpose That Works Either Way
The beauty of this framework is its robustness. Even if we're wrong about the simulation, the approach to life it produces is still good.
Being present, knowing yourself, connecting with others, pursuing what resonates, treating people well, respecting freedom — these lead to a good life regardless of the metaphysics.
You don't have to believe in simulation theory to use it. You just have to ask: What if I chose this life? What would I want to do with it?
The answer is yours. It always was.
Inspired by the philosophical notes of Johannes, who explores purpose, consciousness, and the nature of reality.