Why Are We Here?
When my daughter Jill, now over 60, was four, she asked, “Why are we here?”
Then, without missing a beat, she answered her own question, “To use the earth.”
Hmmmm. “To use the earth.” A four-year-old says it, and suddenly philosophers should all just go home.
It’s funny, of course—but it’s also oddly profound. Children sometimes answer with a kind of brutal simplicity that adults spend decades complicating.
Depending on how you hear it, her answer can mean at least three different things:
- The innocent version
We’re here to make use of what’s been given:
the world,
our abilities,
our time,
our relationships,
our opportunities.
Not waste them. Not drift past them. Use them.
- The practical version
A four-year-old may simply have meant: “We’re here to do things.”
To build, play, grow, try, fall, learn, help, make dinner, plant a garden, tell a joke, fix a leak, hug somebody, write a book, run a business, raise a child.
In that sense, purpose is not abstract at all. It’s participation.
- The cautionary version
Of course, adults hear a shadow in it too.
If we are here merely to use the earth, we may end up using it up.
So maybe the grown-up revision is:
We are here to use the earth well—gratefully, creatively, and responsibly.
Or even:
Not to exploit the earth, but to steward it.
What I especially love is that her answer skips all the grandiosity.
No thunderbolts. No cosmic manifesto. Just: Here’s a world. Do something with it.
That may be closer to the truth than many solemn speeches.
It reminds me of a broader possibility:
We are here not only to ask what life means, but to put life to use.
To use our:
minds for thought,
hearts for love,
hands for service,
voice for truth,
time for what matters.
That’s a pretty sturdy philosophy.
And there’s something else charming about it:
children often confuse “purpose” with “function,” and maybe adults should do that a little more often.
A chair is for sitting.
A spoon is for soup.
A person is for… what?
Maybe:
for noticing,
for loving,
for making,
for helping,
for delighting,
for lifting some tiny corner of existence.
In other words: to use the earth and not waste your turn on it.
That’s a line worth remembering
I have, for more than fifty years.
Alan