I'm skeptical of the notion of purpose, particularly that of objective purpose - the idea that life and the human experience have to mean something. That said, I do feel that both purpose and ethics fulfill a very necessary function in my own life. Perhaps my skepticism points toward something important: even without objective purpose, we seem compelled to create frameworks of meaning. On this, I have some thoughts.
When it comes to purpose, I see two distinct themes. One is short-term purpose. Things like survival needs fall into this category, but so do many other things that operate on relatively short (relative to lifespan) timelines. Your current purpose could be to graduate from university, or get a high paying job. For the sake of this essay, we can forget about that. I'm interested in capital P Purpose, the big hairy audacious purpose that thinkers have been considering since the dawn of time.
My current conviction is:
the purpose of life is to develop a sufficiently interesting and engaging world model (both inner and outer) which generates purpose
In simpler terms, the purpose of life is to become singular - to become you. You do this by generating meaning that is unique to you. Your ability to do this lies in the totality of your experiences, and the act of living them fully, embedding them until they shape who you are.
An important word in my proposition is the word "interesting". And I think it's important to highlight that it is different from "true" or "correct". I will define interesting here as something that generates continuous novelty, so as to engage us and enable an evolution. A worldview that keeps revealing new dimensions, new questions, new ways of seeing - this is what sustains our engagement with life. I’m not sure it's ever about finding the right answer - even though we may think we seek this - but about finding a perspective that keeps generating new insights.
This view tries to unify ancient, classical, and modern notions of purpose. Consider how each tradition offers a world model designed to sustain engagement:
Aristotle taught eudaimonia, flourishing through excellent activity of reason and character - a life of continuous development and actualization. The Stoics formulated that one should play the role fate assigns with rational dignity; virtue is living according to nature - finding meaning through alignment with order. Daoism espouses effortless action - life as an open-ended improvisation that responds to each moment's novelty. Early Buddhism sought liberation from suffering by seeing reality clearly and cultivating compassion - a practice that transforms one's entire relationship to experience.
Nietzsche believed art was the proper task of life, creating values and perspectives that make existence worth affirming. William James said that in a "pluralistic universe" truth is what works for present purposes and beliefs are "tools for coping" that prove their worth through their consequences. Positive psychology thinks we should flourish through engagement and meaning, effective altruists that we should do the most good we can, and transhumanists wish for open-ended self-enhancement.
The meta in all of these perspectives is that they all offer "a sufficiently interesting and engaging world model". Each provides a framework rich enough to sustain a lifetime of exploration and development. You may pick your poison. This can be as absurd, common, or singular as you wish.
I do believe Viktor Frankl's point that humans are "meaning-seeking animals". Perhaps what we seek isn't meaning in the sense of cosmic significance, but meaning in the sense of engagement. Ways of seeing that keep life vivid and worth living. The purpose isn't to find the correct worldview, but to develop one generative enough to sustain your particular existence.
This view gets around the problem of objective purpose through customization and malleability, while acknowledging our deep need for purposive frameworks. It could accommodate having no worldview at all - if that absence itself generates the kind of engagement that keeps you alive to experience. The only failure would be a worldview so impoverished it ceases to generate new ways of seeing, leaving you with repetition and stagnation.