Life - what exactly is it?

We're born, we go to school, then pursue "higher education" at some college / university, start our professional careers, get married, produce kids, and then die. Of course, some of the luckier ones among us have a lot of fun in all this. My question is, is this what life's all about? I can quite understand that as humans, we need to eat, sleep and, pardon me, pee - these are inevitable things indeed.

Beyond these things, however, do we question our actions? Why do we go to school? Because our parents sent us there, and we didn't really have a choice. Why do we go to college? Because we start feeling vaguely uneasy that if we don't, then we'd perhaps not get "ahead" in life, or maybe because we feel that it'd be fun to spend some time there; more common, I've noticed, is the inner voice that tells us that a good degree ensures a good job - after all, an engineering degree is usually a gateway (in India, at any rate) to pursuing higher education abroad; and that higher education is a means of gaining a higher salary. A genuine desire to learn for the sake of acquiring knowledge is probably the least common of the reasons why we study.

The reason for holding down a job are pretty obvious, so I doubt if I should discuss it at all.

Marriage - this is possibly the most discussed topic among people who have crossed a certain age (ask, and I shall tell you!). It's also the most often quoted ingredient of the act of "settling down" in life; in fact, in some communities, settling down and marrying are almost synonymous. Please indulge me as I make the (admittedly stupid) assumption that the reasons given by a very small sample of the human population (of roughly a dozen or so friends and strangers) to be representative of the entire human race. Here are the top reasons why people marry:

1. Everybody marries! ("...so why shouldn't I?")
2. What else will you do in life later on? ("come on, there isn't much fun in life without a marriage!")
3. One has to settle down in life, you know (whatever that means!)
4. We need companionship in our later years (hmmm, seems to make some sense)
5. I love him / her, and want to spend the rest of my life with him (this makes sense too)
6. I love to have kids! (really? Why don't you adopt some orphans then?)
7. Mmm, er, it's a legally sanctioned way to, you know, make out, you know what I mean? No? (looks of embarrassment) Well, you know, you can make love with a member of the other sex all your life (that's pretty direct!)
8. I want to let the human race survive (ah, behold the great philanthropist at work; he's perhaps the one that smokes so that employees of tobacco companies don't go starving)
9. Peer pressure (I dig this!)
10. It's the done thing (oh yeah?)
11. My parents want me to marry, and I don't want to disappoint them (duh?)
12. I don't have the courage to face life without a life partner (this person is at least honest)

I'll let you form your own conclusions from the above. However, you'll notice that a lot of people don't really seem to have honest answers, and usually pass off other people's views as their own, or maybe they've hypnotised themselves into believing those views.

The last act of any human being is that of dying - and this is something over which we don't have any control - at least, not unless you're a highly evolved yogi - so it's pointless discussing this either.

In summary, I think we go through life mostly in deference to opinions that are not necessarily our own. To be fair, there are many situations over which we have no control, so that ought to somehow mitigate the charge of our actions being mindless, but all things considered, I can't help feeling that we are mindless automatons, most often programmed by society, and somewhat less often by ourselves.