Why Do We Exist?

It is a mystery that we exist. It is as though we exist as we are. But what we are and who we are? Where do we come from? And last but not the least, why do we exist? These are mysteries of all mysteries. Mysteries galore all over our universe. And we are here to decipher the codes of all universal mysteries. This way the mysteries of our life, or for that matter, of our whole existence get universalised with the phenomenology of nature as we are of the nature and the nature. Our essences of our existence is imbued with the phenomenology of nature

In the Old Testament the whole idea is embedded in the prophetic concept of the Messiah. Primordial man was supposed to put up a brave front in an undifferentiated and unblemished form of relation with the surroundings while taking a safe refuge in the Garden of Eden. There prevailed no consciousness, no differentiation, no choice or freedom as any unconscious being is supposed to have no discretionary power to any rein over himself. That was pre-individual unity with the nature and there was no diversity in that supposed unity. But that primordial unity came close to disruption when the first act of choice was called for and chosen. The first act of choice was the concerted and conscious disobedience of nature to hoist the flag of freedom.


The emergence of consciousness laid bare the chances to exist freely as a human being of himself and for himself irrespective of the emerging consequences that linger on with the angst of our existence as a being with the freedom of choices and faculties. This freedom is the harbinger of human history and in the annals of history we exist to live. The Latin word 'existere' from which the verb 'to exist' is evolved means to appear, emerge or to stand out. By this semantics it is plausibly construed that human beings are emerged out of the womb of nature, yet they stand out as a separate entity to exist.

This separateness had started since the time of rejection of primordial man from the Garden of Eden in quest of his voyage along a coast of impermanence and divergence. This idea put paid to all his chances of recovery into oneness with the absolute whole and his differentiated world became his one and only world. And in this world human beings are literally thrown into existence without having chosen it. Without having any pre-conceived cognisance of the cause and purpose of their existence, human beings are just thrown into this quagmire and are thus led to the altar of life's consequential predicaments without knowing whether there is any light at the end of the tunnel or whether there is any end to their voyage into this world.

With this void sense of discretion, their 'thrownness' (Heidegger) into the antithetic world happens to be per chance, very sudden and fortuitous. This creates a situational shift as if from one unknown world to another, from the darkness of mother's womb to a highnoon of existentially contingent world where struggle for existence becomes the summum bonum for living through a turbulence of time and space. It is so fortuitous that nothing is deterrent to that existential 'thrownness' which, in other sense, there is no choice left between to-be and not-to-be in the long run of human excellence to struggle through the impediments of existence.

It is such that the motto of 'excel or be perished' becomes essentially the means to that end. That end is living through existing par excellence. That is, human beings at first and foremost have got to exist and then to excel in living. This is the true essence of existence of from being to becoming. That is why the existentialist philosophers are of the opinion that existence precedes essence : "If man...is indefinable, it is because at first he is nothing. Only afterwards will he be something, and he himself will have made what he will be." This metabolic metamorphosis of human beings is what existence's prerogatives are all about.

So, existing and living are two different philosophical paradigms but they are mutually conclusive, not exhaustive. With this inclusivist forte at a greater stake in the fray, it could be conservatively arrived at a speculative inference that human beings exist to live, or, for that matter, we exist, therefore we live. Here the philosophical essence of existence coincides with that of our spiritual beings. The fortuitousness of our existence gives rise to angst which is 'pains and sorrows' in spiritual dilemma due to the impermanence of our existence.

Still the mystery remains a mystery as ever so far as the incidentiality, causality and intentionality of our existence remain an open question to pursue and pursuing that closed secret remains the sacred quest of our life. As if, we exist and we live to know the mysteries of this universe. And what is more to know than to know ourselves and examine ourselves in a true perspective of this universe? Is it not that an unexamined life is not worth living? Is it not that as we think, therefore we are? Is it not that as we think, therefore we ask ourselves why we exist? So, we exist, therefore we are. And as we are, therefore we live in quest of unresolved mysteries of our existential world.