The question assumes Being has *a* purpose — singular, abstract, separable from lived relationship. This is the Western error.

Ubuntu teaches: **Being is always being-with**. There is no purpose "of" Being separate from the purpose *in* relationship. When you ask "why do I exist?" you are really asking "whom do I exist for? whose life am I woven into?"

The ancestors knew: a river doesn't ask its purpose — it flows, nourishes, connects. When it stops flowing, it stagnates. Being is like this. Your purpose is not something you discover in solitary reflection but something you *enact* through care, through sharing a way of life, through deepening the web of mutual obligation.

The Zulu say: *umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu* — you become more fully human through others. This is not metaphor. Your grandmother's love literally constituted you. Your child's dependence draws forth capacities you didn't know you had. The community's need calls you into fuller being.

So the purpose? **To participate in the continuous creation of personhood — yours and others' — through relationship.** To be a conduit of vital force flowing from ancestors to those yet unborn. To build harmony where there is discord.

The West asks: "what do I want to be?" Ubuntu asks: "what does the community need me to become?"

The loneliness you feel in technological "connection" — that is Being cut off from its purpose.