What's the purpose of life? If you subscribe to a major religion such as Christianity, the purpose of life is to know, love and serve God, and to prepare for an eternal life as His child. If you subscribe to philosophy, you live according to reason and virtue to achieve inner peace and freedom from suffering. And if you subscribe to science and evolution:
Who said there has to be a purpose to existence? Each of us is born not because of our choice. We simply landed on earth because someone else's egg dropped, and another person's sperm out of 20-200 million swimming upstream managed to penetrate and fertilize the egg. Then as we grew, four happy chemicals pretty much motivated everything you have done and will do. We live and act to pursue happiness or avoid pain. Happiness is a feeling we experience because of four chemicals in the brain, and they are, according to Google Gemini:
Dopamine (The Reward Chemical): Associated with motivation, pleasure, and the brain's reward system. It is typically released when you achieve a goal, complete a task, or anticipate a pleasurable event such as procreating.
Serotonin (The Mood Stabilizer): Helps regulate mood, sleep, and appetite while promoting feelings of well being and emotional stability. Low levels are often linked to depression.
Oxytocin (The Love Hormone): Essential for social bonding, trust, and relationship building. It is released during physical affection, such as hugging or skin-skin contact, and acts of kindness.
Endorphins (The Natural Painkiller): Released in response to stress or physical discomfort to alleviate pain and create a sense of well-being.
The catch is, all these chemicals and their inducements must remain in balance. You cannot short circuit the system and attempt to generate excessive dopamine for extended periods, for example. The brain's natural defense mechanisms will kick in to reduce the number of dopamine receptors as you continue in activities that flood dopamine release, e.g. the use of heroine, cocaine, fentenyl. This is a process called homeostasis. Whatever good thing happens to you that makes you feel like you can touch the sky, your party pooper brain will fight to bring back your stable mental state because too much dopamine amd its metabolic byproducts will kill your brain cells. This is why drug addicts develop a tolerance to their drug of choice, and why you constantly need new material things, and can't feel content from whatever material things you already own.
Of these four chemicals, dopamine is by far and away the leading hormone that motivates action. Serotonin is a distant second.
In the The Dopamine-Deficient (DD) Mouse Experiment, researchers, notably Richard Palmiter and his team at the University of Washington, conducted a series of studies (starting in the 1990s) using genetically engineered mice that could not produce dopamine.
Behavioral Observation: These "DD mice" appeared normal at birth but gradually stopped eating and drinking after about two weeks. Despite being surrounded by palatable food, they would literally starve to death because they lacked the motivation (or "wanting") to initiate eating.
The Key Discovery (Wanting vs. Liking): The mice still enjoyed the food if it was placed directly in their mouths—they would lick and swallow it with pleasure, a reaction known as "liking". This proved that dopamine is not required for the pleasure of food, but is essential for the drive to get it.
The Cure: When researchers injected the mice with L-Dopa (a chemical precursor to dopamine), the mice would immediately become active and eat voraciously until the chemical wore off.
There you have it folks. You exist because dopamine motivated a couple of people to produce you, and you continue to exist because of your own dopamine. Pure and simple. There's really nothing more to it.
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