Purpose

The other day I was chatting with a friend when the subject of purpose of life in general and that of one's life in particular came up. After a bit of thinking about it my friend declared that the purpose of life is "to find the purpose of life." That immediately sounded paradoxical to me, but I could not quite show why. But, it just occurred to me today what was wrong with that statement.

If purpose of life were to find purpose of life, then either one will never fulfill that purpose and thus live purposelessly, or will eventually be without a purpose. In either case one's life would be without a purpose.

Another way to look at is to say that if a person makes that statement - purpose of my life is to find purpose of my life - he or she indirectly also states that he or she knows the purpose of his or her life - so what is there to look for, thus the statement makes no sense.