How do you think about your life?

Big questions @wundayatta. I often find myself referring to life as a journey, because I think of it that way. We are travelling along, meeting new people, experiencing new situations and making decisions as we continue along our way. Some people will not travel very far in their lives, preferring to stay in their comfort zone, others will be adventurous explorers. I am probably somewhere in the middle and would like to be more of an adventurous explorer. All the points are connected though. As we gain knowledge and have experiences, they influence the steps that follow and our understanding of the world around us and the people in it and our understanding of what has happened in the past will hopefully evolve too.

I hope I make meaning out of my life by not limiting myself. By constantly striving to learn and experience new things and by sharing what I learn with others but also by being open to the lessons others can teach me. I think we learn every day. About the world we live in and the people we share the world with. As soon as we begin to think we know everything, as sure as eggs are eggs, someone will show us we are wrong, I actually like that. Not sure I always succeed in my endeavours but I hope I am a caring and considerate traveller and I hope I will always be open to learning and to change both in attitude and direction. I actually find when I am making decisions out of fear, I will often force myself go go a different way. I am conscious of not allowing myself to be limited by my fears.

Yes I do bother to think about my life as my answer so far should suggest. I feel it is arrogant and selfish not to keep in mind our place on this journey and how we can influence the world we live in either positively or negatively. Even in tiny ways. I am a great believer in giving back. I don’t always live up to my own high standards but I try.

Egh. ’‘scratches noggin’’ Life and existing is so complicated that the best effort I might do is explain it through something extremely simple, and something that I don’t believe in. Like when the Devil is said to come claim the souls of the damned before they die, but he has to do it through order and must abide by specifications. There has to be a cycle and some logic revolving around the victim, and it all has to fit together somehow in the victim’s life, before it ends.

So in that sense, we all have a role to play, and I’m no exception. I use Satan for this because it’s easier to make sense of what I’m trying to say then if I were to use God, because I don’t see that much ’‘good’’ anywhere. Now that’s where it gets iffy, since I don’t believe in stuff but I believe that how we work is much similar to what a lot of beliefs present, but on a scientific angle. So maybe if use a Stephen King quote instead; life is like a huge ass jungle, and we happen to be the meanest motherfuckers in it.
Now you’re probably wondering what this has to do with what you’re asking, since the question is wanting individual response and not some personal opinion about universal matters.
But that’s just it, I’m in some badass jungle, and I’ve got some role to play, and that which I can’t go against, since I don’t know what it is, no matter how much I may think I do. So I don’t know how to explain my story since I don’t know what it is. I can define it myself through my own experiences, and probably that’s the most important part when I consider how insignificant I am, that is, if I’m trying to be a little less pessimistic, but what it all boils down to, ultimately, that being the best I can do, rather than what it truly is.

A goth may champion individualism and diversity, but they’re still human and think like humans. They’re no different than anyone else, and perhaps their only role in life is to engorge the pockets of Hot Topic chain stores, or frighten small children into behaving and doing their homework, therefore ironically changing mindframes to fit into the norms of society. There are no black sheep, just a lot of different bandwagons.
That’s an extremely crude and stereotypical example, but it should do for the time being.

I mean like, whatever walk of life one has, it has some purpose that furthers evolution and societies in the long run, but to what purpose this leads to, who knows. I don’t even think there’s a purpose, considering that I think we’re animals. We just do what we do until we cease to exist, and forcibly, everything has to cease existing some day. And that faithful day will also cease to exist. Until then, we’ll keep killing our fellow man if they present a threat to us, and we’ll keep loving our children as long as evolution needs them. Of course, some people are not loved, others are not killed, but a role is still assigned to them, like a slap in the face, that is, if anybody wanted to point out how narrow minded this here answer seems.
Ants have societies too. We may be superior to them in that we can kill them, but we’ll never truly be superior to them until we make them understand that. And we can’t. So, in that sense, that’s why I relate mankind to animals, since we just do what we do. We’re just the meanest ones.
So because of that, I never thought of my life as a story or anything like that. To me it’s like, I’m playing out some role I know nothing of, and so is everyone else. I often try to take events and string them together to make sense of things, and I often succeed, or so I think. Might be delusion though. In fact delusion is probably the best ingredient that whatever powers that be may have of making us what do they want us to. Although said ’‘greater powers’’ are probably nothing at all, and if they are something, probably something that isn’t sentient, like we all live in some huge ass subconscious. Man I keep tracking myself off, don’t know what’s wrong with me tonight lol. XD
So like, my life is a big chess game, and I have no power to do anything ecxept enjoy the time I have until I get knocked off the board. Just like drawings put in a kid’s story book can do nothing but be drawn, and then shown. At least that’s how it feels. I guess my life can be a story, or told as one. But a story needs a meaning, and I don’t feel that me being some chess piece is really meaning enough for me, at least not on what I perceive to be the grand scheme of things. It’s more like the Energizer Bunny, you go on and on and on until you stop. So I guess my life can be a lot of things, whatever what is, I just never thought about that, since I’m too preoccupied being an emo. XD

I wrote some answer on here not too long ago about how life is people being plopped in a river with a strong current, and then you swim, drown or hang on to a log or something. I guess kind of like that, but less hectic, and more organized.

Make the goals. Take the steps. And go.

Life is a journey. Everyday is a new adventure. Some days are more adventurous than others but each one is unique in it’s own way. I try to live each day like it is my last…though most days I do count on waking up again the next day and so far I have been pretty successful at doing that!

My life has been very abnormal compared to most people. I should write a book. Im manic today. IM impulsive. Im ready to move. Vyvanse rules. I have pter pan syndrome.

Most of the time I think of it pretty much as @Bellatrix describes, a journey of interconnected, ever building experiences. At distinct times throughout my life, though, it’s almost seemed to be a movie I was watching, or as if it were happening to someone else. Disassociation brought on by unbelievable stress and/or depression, I imagine. It’s a very, very weird feeling.

Every so often I’ll replay moments of my life in (roughly) chronological order in my head. Like rewinding a movie and skipping ahead from segment to segment.

It helps me see where I am now and helps me decide where to go next.

I definitely see it as an unfolding narrative that I have a certain amount of control over – not unlike those “Choose Your Adventure” books I read as a kid.

I think of my life as a kind of play. Sometimes I’m directing, sometimes I’m not. Everything is related to the next thing. Of course I think about my life. I’ll go back to something that happened a while ago and in my head just go over what happened from then until the present.

My life is one big circle that I can’t escape.

I once took a workshop with the Joseph Campbell foundation. It was based on Campbell’s Power of Myth book. I learned something there that gave me a new perspective on my life.

Campbell’s work introduces us to the structure of the story—the story of the hero’s journey. When we tell stories of our lives, we unconsciously try to fit them into one model or another of the hero’s journey.

We start out or are thrown out or are given a mission. We wander in the wilderness. We meet an conquer beasts, and we come home, bearing a boon for our people.

Our lives are filled with heroic journeys. All we have to do to tell one of those stories is to manufacture a beginning and an end. I say manufacture because our lives are continuous, but when we tall a story, there has to be a beginning and an end, and to a large degree, those points are arbitrary.

There are major stories in my life—my struggle to overcome infertility and bipolar disorder; many different love stories; stories of major work I have done—and there are lesser stories, such as those about a particular event or contest or whatever. Each time I tell a story, I tell it differently, because it changes depending on who is listening and how much time they have.

I think that stories create meaning for me. It is in the process of telling a story that I find out what it means to me; what I have learned from it. Indeed, I’m not sure I learn anything without telling the story to someone else. It’s almost as if it isn’t real until I tell someone else.

I think of my life as material for stories. I am always looking for beginning points and ending points. Sometimes stories with beginning and ending just drop into my lap. Other times I have to work hard to find those points. Still other times, I don’t want a beginning or an end, and they it stops being a story. It is no longer something that can be talked about; it is only something to be experienced.

I think the most satisfying way to live is when you are always in experience and never needing to tell a story. Except that I enjoy the stories so much. So it has to be more complicated than that. So, like life, this answer is ongoing. I’m going to stop now, not because it’s over, but because I need a rest.