What Is Life About?

God help me, because I don't know anymore.

Is it mating?  Is that it?  Raising issue/kids?  Is it about status, finding a way in this cold world and holding your head high against the tides that be?

A Beethoven string quartet?  Beauty?  Some aesthetic ideal?  Aren't aesthetic ideals just sort of reflections of what's so beautiful about life, though, in some more essential way?

Getting into good relations with others?  Well, what does that mean?  What relationship is crucial and honest, not a pot-luck or amalgam of hesitations and false-starts?  Which relationships work?

Having respectful kids?  Parents?  Elders?

Is it not going mad by the time you've reached middle age?  Recognized mortality?  Fended off youthful idealism?  Found enlightenment?  Where?  How?  What does it look like?  Is there any right answer?  I'm stunned for something correct.  Please provide it.

Have faith?  Is that the answer?  Have faith that there is purpose?

In the end, is religion effective because it is effectively all we can do??