Purpose & Meaning

Find yours and it will make everything easier

Ancient Evening by Alphonse Osbert, 1908 (public domain - Wikimedia Commons)

“The purpose of life is not to be happy—but to matter, to be productive, to be useful, to have it make some difference that you lived at all.”
— Leo Rosten, 1962

If I asked you to name a philosopher, you probably wouldn’t say Pythagoras.

You know his theorem, whether it was imprinted on your brain thanks to a geometry teacher or by the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz, who spontaneously recited it upon receiving his brain.¹

His work not only inspired the likes of Copernicus, Newton, and Einstein, but also paved the way for Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle.

Pythagoras coined the term philosopher to describe himself as a “lover of wisdom.” He encapsulated this love in a brief, insightful reflection on the role of philosophy in human life:

“Some are influenced by the love of wealth while others are blindly led on by the mad fever for power and domination, but the finest type of man gives himself up to discovering the mean…