When you think about your purpose in life, what tends to come to mind? Is it pursuing the career of your dreams after years of rigorous training and exams? Is it attaining fame, fortune, and glory for years to come? Is it changing the world through new technologies, research, or policies? Perhaps there is not the slightest clue in your mind as to what you're searching for in life like me. When discouraged about life's infinite interpretations, and how few of them apply to the life you're obligated to live, I make an attempt to look at life through the eyes of our predecessors. Only through years of evolution, security, and stability has life overcomplicated itself to be something much more demanding and intimidating than what it truly is. Life, when viewed through the simplest of terms, is nothing but a game of survival where the point is to replace yourself and leave the world better than you left it. So from this point of view the purpose of life is to learn, survive, adapt, reproduce, and pass on the knowledge you've gained to someone else, usually your children or any descendants, to make survival easier. This knowledge of survival passed down from one generation to the next was the first tradition shared. As a species that relies heavily on interpersonal interaction perhaps the largest purpose of life that humanity shares is the ability to survive to be able to pass on tradition. However as we progressed out the food chain, out of the wilderness, into the concrete jungle and the guarantee of survival increased, the knowledge of hunting and gathering became more and more obsolete to us but the passing on of knowledge became more and more important. We see in our current day that this passing on of knowledge has become incredibly streamlined as we absorb countless hours of media through the internet at all ages and countless more information in school. But whatever happened to real tradition, passed on through real concern, connection, and affection. Not the knowledge ingrained in your memory through a cold system and unforgiving teachers but the tradition passed on through your family and your loved ones that really defines you as a person. What has been passed onto you that was formative to you as an individual? What are you going to be able to pass onto your descendants that will make their existence easier and the world a better a place? Personally I can attribute much of my own personality, many of my mannerisms, and kindness to my parents and and how involved they were in teaching me right from wrong. Currently with the world being so fast-paced, parenting has become a very passive activity in many households, leaving the media that children consume be the main source of information for many of their formative years. I find comfort in knowing that I have so much purpose in the most basic understanding of life. To survive long enough to pass on knowledge to my descendants as previous loved ones have passed on to me.