George Kao (YouTube) challenges the common claim that life’s purpose is happiness or having great experiences. He argues that defining purpose as happiness leads to FOMO, selfishness, and blaming others. Instead, Kao proposes that the purpose of life is growth—becoming the best version of ourselves across mental, emotional, and spiritual dimensions. He illustrates this with personal examples (recording in cold rain, staycations, difficult projects) and concludes that if purpose is growth, every moment is meaningful and one can live purposefully now.
Chapters
It just started to rain, so I'm making my video here with my umbrella. Today I want to talk with you about what I believe the purpose of life is. Typically, you will hear oftentimes that the purpose of life is happiness, to be happy, or that the purpose of life is to have great experiences. I think that is a dangerous definition of the purpose of life and I'll explain why. When you think the purpose of life is happiness or experiences, it becomes easy to get into the fear of missing out. Oh, I didn't. I really want to go to that concert. Oh, I really want to go to that festival. Oh, I really want to have these experiences in my life. And if I don't, I gotta make sure I make it happen. And it becomes, to be honest, it becomes quite a selfish life, a self absorbed life. It's easy to start blaming other people for getting in the way of your purpose because your purpose was to be happy and to have these experiences, right? So let me give you an alternative idea, one that I believe, and it's made my life very meaningful, which is that the purpose of life is growth. The purpose of life is to become the best version of who we are in terms of our mental well being and our spiritual growth, our emotional maturity. I believe that's the purpose of life. So therefore it doesn't matter what experience I'm having. Right now it's very cold right now. It's lightly raining, maybe it's soft for a little bit. But I'm here making the video and it's helping me grow because it's teaching me persistence and it's teaching me to enjoy the moment no matter how freezing. Literally my hands, I'm holding the camera right now my hands are freezing. It's extremely cold right now. But every moment, it doesn't have to be. Oh God, I went to a great vacation. It could simply be I was at home, I had a staycation and I just had some time off to rest or I'm working on a very challenging project. There is the purpose of life. Right there too is how can I bring more courage to this challenging project? How can I bring more wisdom to this challenging conversation or this challenging relationship? If we are willing to take on this purpose of life as growth and becoming the best version of who we are in any moment, then every moment is purposeful and every moment is meaningful. And we don't ever have to worry about the fear of missing out. We don't ever have to worry that somebody else has better life experiences than us. Somebody else has more things. More vacations, a better job, a better relationship, you know, more money, better. You know, they look better, better looking. They have, you know, better health. It doesn't matter. Because every single moment you have been given has been given to you to live your purpose right now. Your purpose is not to have the perfect job, the perfect business, the perfect relationship, the perfect body, I believe. Let's try on this idea that your purpose is to bring your best self into this moment. And therefore, you can always live your life's purpose right now and in every single day.
