The purpose of life is
This is what I have learned. This is what I cannot discard.
The purpose of life is not happiness or self-expression. The purpose of life is to perform a utility for some person or persons with or to whom an individual has some affiliation or obligation.
This utility is to be performed in the absence of a consumption of resources; this utility is an apology for and repayment of any given consumption of resources.
This utility is to be performed in exception. This utility is rendered nonfunctional and nonexistent if it is not to a quality of exception.
Others may be permitted to perform as their utility the selfsame exception of their existence; that is to say, others may be and be deemed in and of themselves "special" enough to live.
Not the self. The self is not allowable.
The self is permitted one utility of this category: to exempt oneself from the circumstance of affiliation or obligation, wholesale. To exonerate the burden-bearers and become as a passing thought.
Such examples of exceptional utility include superlative talent, peerless work ethic, innately unique abilities toward listening and providing counsel, and in some extreme cases the heightened tolerance to an end of remarkable patience.
You must *be* better. The purpose of life is to *be* better. And note that work ethic may be commendable en masse, but talent neatly rewards the few (to the one). You must be *the best* and only then--
Only then may you live.
But you will not be the best. You cannot be the best.
And thus, you must subjugate yourself. You must make of yourself that rare superlative patience, that whatever crosses your path in displeasure becomes your objective. Not that which tries your firmest morals, but that which tries your feeble, vain human impatience.
No jealousy. No envy. No pettiness. No shielding the self from those reminders that you cannot be the best, or even anything to speak of. No coveting, no coddling the weakness. No yielding to those who would enable and comfort the weakness, even if in service of an imagined someday strength.
The purpose of life is to be the smallest, and the most unobtrusive. As you cannot grow, shrink. Smooth out each furrow of childishness. Reduce your selfish subjection to the size of a pearl, a pea.
You are not the pearl. You are only the pea.
And there are no rewards for being, truly, sweet.
The purpose of life is to kill the yearning, warring self.
The purpose of life is to die.