Sorry, if you’re looking for an externally imposed purpose to living, i.e. an objective one, then no, there isn’t one. Life doesn’t have A purpose, it has many, many purposes. You create them as you go along; and you will probably have several at a time.
Your purpose in life can, and does, change many times over the course of your life. From being a good student; finding a caring, understanding, and supportive mate; to raising your children, funding their college education or your retirement or helping your community, etc.
As a child your “purpose” is to play and enjoy childhood, to learn about the world, and prepare yourself for your teen years. As a teenager, your purpose is get an education; to date and possibly find a life-mate, learn adult skills and to prepare to become the adult that will be capable of creating a home for yourself and of fulfilling your life’s dreams.
As an adult your purpose may be to pursue an academic career, or a business one; find a fulfilling hobby (or three), or just travel down the path of self-discovery. You might even want to become a scientist or philosopher to help contribute to the body of human knowledge that will be passed along to the generations that follow. Some say that their purpose in life is to discover their gifts and share them with others.
Along the way, you may want to have a family of your own and to take responsibility for the children that you bring into the world; children whom you will help in developing their own purposes for living.
It is much better do determine our own purposes in life, than to have some church do it for you based on their agenda! After all is it really God deciding what you should do, or is it the preacher telling you what God wants you to do? In some more progressive churches, preachers may tell you that you must find out what God wants you to do. But even then, during your search, your preacher will certainly be there to put a word in your ear about what’s “correct” and what’s not. For instance, he would never encourage you to study all the other religions (or even the other denominations) and pick the one that best suits your needs.
The church would have you believe that the ONLY valid purpose in life is to support and worship GOD (through their church, of course).
When one looks at all people who have ever lived and compare that to all the ones who could have lived but were never born, you can see that, just in being born at all, you have beat some very impressive odds. When you think of all the great artists, composers, teachers, humanitarians and leaders that have ever lived, and then think of all of the ones who might have been even greater, but who never were, you see how great a gift your life is. Your parents have beat all the odds to have been born themselves, then one day they met, and out of all the possible children they could have had, they had you!
They gave you the gift of life. Live your life to the fullest. Learn, teach, write, act, travel, experiment, help others and discover. They are all good purposes. Think and decide which purposes are right for you! Can you think of anything more important to decide?
A man and his son are walking along a beach which is strewn with starfish stranded on the sand from the last tide. Occasionally the man would reach down and pick one up, and throw it back into the waves so that it will live. His son says “Dad, there are thousands of starfish on the beach; you can’t possibly hope to make a difference by throwing a few back.” The father bent down, picked up another one and threw it into the ocean. He smiled and said “I made a difference to that one.”
You may want to help those less fortunate than you but feel that you’re not important / rich / influential enough to really help, or that no single person can make a difference. But you don’t have to help them all, just help one other person at a time.
That’s a pretty good purpose to add to your list.