The purpose of relationships is to love.
I could stop there, but I know many people believe the purpose of relationships is to learn. When our relationships end and we feel hurt and empty, I think it’s easier to believe the purpose of relationships is to learn. After all, we probably did learn something. Reminding ourselves that we learned something may help fill the emptiness or give reason for the hurt.
Let’s assume for the moment that the purpose of relationships is to learn. Say I learn from my relationships. Relationship after relationship. At some point, I die. Then what do I have? Nothing. What does the world have? Nothing. “Wait!” you might say. Others have benefited from what you taught them from what you learned. To that I reply, well, then the purpose of life is to teach and share what I learned. In other words, the purpose of learning is to teach and share even better. The purpose of life is to teach, not learn. If I learned without teaching then I did not fulfill my life’s purpose. Learning can indeed be selfish. I may have learned how to be a better dictator or a better thief or a better embezzler or a better cold hearted business man. Certainly learning those things is not part of what anyone means when they say the purpose of life is to learn.
Therefore, learning can be a selfish act that disappears when I die, leaves negative consequences on the world, or leaves positive consequences on the world. There are other things that have a similar pattern. Money is the one that most obviously comes to my mind. Mostly we think of money as evil, bad, or the means for greed in our society. I would like to examine it more closely though. First, money can be one of those things that disappears when I die. I can’t take it with me and it may have given the world nothing. Second, I may have used my money to cause harm or in ways that indirectly caused harm. In this case, when I die, I leave behind hurt and trauma. Third, and perhaps most contrary to what our society typically thinks about money, I may have used my money to do good in the world. In this case, the money left behind healing, warm hearts, a better world after I died. These three possibilities are exactly the three possibilities of learning and have exactly the same pattern resulting in how I use money and how I use the skills and knowledge I learned.
Looking closer at the “how I use” of money and learning there is something in common that I think applies to many things and has a deeper meaning. When I use learning for the benefit of others through teaching (or something else) then I have done “good”. When I use learning for my own benefit without impacting others significantly then I have done nothing – a waste of my life in a sense. When I use learning for the detriment of others then I have done “bad”. When someone believes the purpose of life is learning, I think they’re really meaning this first part. Doing good. And in particular getting better at doing good. Really though, I think the purpose of life is doing good for others. I would call this love. Therefore, the purpose of life is to love.
Interestingly, if I spend a life of loving then when I die I have left a positive legacy in the world. Perhaps I don’t take the love or this positive legacy with me, I don’t know. I don’t know what happens after I die (perhaps you do, but I don’t). Whatever the afterlife holds, my life has impacted people positively and those people carry that on and perhaps pass it on. I may not be remembered personally hundreds of years from now, but the love I gave will merge with the love others gave to create a more positive world indefinitely into the future. That certainly sounds like the ingredients of a purpose.
Importantly, learning is not the only means to this end. In fact, again, the most obvious example to me of another means is money. “Whoa! What!” you may be thinking. Look at the works of Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Michael Bloomberg, George Soros, and others. Sure you can name billionaires doing harm, but money isn’t the point here. The point is love. Bill Gates genuinely wants to make the world a better place for the benefit of others, not himself. Same for Warren Buffett. Same for Michael Bloomberg and same for George Soros. Even some of the people that do not give substantial amounts of their fortune to charity still may have a mission to improve life for others. Take Elon Musk. His stated goals are to reduce climate emissions through his efforts at Tesla and to establish life on Mars just in case something goes catastrophically wrong on Earth. These things clearly benefit others. Though I suppose one could argue they are for his benefit alone and he just needs other people to accomplish them. I don’t think so. The point remains that money can be used positively to benefit others, negatively to harm others, or neutrally.
The purpose of life still remains independent of learning where learning is just one means to achieve a meaningful life. Learning and money are good assuming one uses learning, money, or whatever towards a positive purpose. The greatest positive purpose, the one that all other positive purposes are just categories of, is love. The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.