The Knock-Out Human

I have come upon this show once, it was late at night, and it was a show where they were interviewing singles (those using online dating and such) of why they were still single. However, all these people they interviewed were over 30, and maybe even 40 and older.. Questions included: Why do you think you are not married yet, etc... Do you blame bad luck, and as such - people looked back at their life and answered those questions. There was absolutely nothing wrong with these people, they just never found that perfect someone.

However, what absolutely intrigued me about this show is the arising thought of pointlessness about life, to which all these different, very different people came to concluding. There was no happiness, no longing for anyone, it was as if they were starved of positive emotion and hope. These people weren't depressed, not all of them. Many had extended family and friends, but just no wife or husband.. Many were very rich, and had random dates here and there, many were attractive both outside and inside... but they never found anyone to love and to trust. Hearing these words ( and they weren't directly talking to the interviewer, I think it was something like a video journal kind of thing) hearing these words, made me understand something about this life, I guess.

Lack of purpose. There was no more purpose... They were happy, they had careers, etc... but no love. There was no love in their life, and from that they all concluded that there was no purpose. This specific conclusion is what intrigued me. The powerlessness that I caught in their eye, I felt this weakness about them.. as if they were ill. As if they were like a long outstretched plant reaching towards the sky for sunshine that never came.. Its a little scary. To be alone and to not be loved. They felt scared. Imagine not being loved, by anybody, ever, no one to trust your life with, no one to watch you live your life.. there is some discomfort to it. See the thing why young singles don't really feel this way is because they still have hope and knowledge that they will someday find someone, and this hope is what these people have lost, they don't even look anymore, they just gave up.
Hm, one woman was talking about having children. And how life was pointless without having a family. Another man always wanted to have children, from very early on in his life, and his wife or girlfriend didn't want any and so she left him, and he was alone from then on.
Sad stories, I guess.. but then the question in my head arises - why is it like that? Why do we want purpose? Why do we end up finding it in family and love? Why does love provide us with purpose? As lovely and comfortable as it is, how is it that we cannot function without it? We just get stuck somewhere in the middle, unable to bulge because - its as if love functions as the machine oil in the hardware of our brains, or at least our lives.
And yet one can never name this thing. At the beginning of a life, we all want to have it. We want to receive it and take it. We want the attention, the care, the softness, the safety, the trust and whatever else that love can represent. Its what allows us to tell ourselves, OK, its OK to go on, everything is fine.
Somewhere in the middle of our lives we learn that its just as beautiful to give love as to receive it, and we start giving, to our children (especially with new mothers) then to grandchildren, eventually you receive enough love from life that you start giving, it doesn't really matter how late or early your realization comes to you. And this circle becomes complete. The person feels complete, as if they "did their duty"
But why do we have that feeling? Is it something inborn in us, selected for through natural selection to allow for survival? Is it really? To the extent that we see purpose in it? Purpose in such a silly thing as love? That seems to be just an emotion?
I feel like this was one of those experiments, like in genetics, "the knock out" where you create the "knockout mouse" that doesn't express a certain gene, to see how that gene functions and what it does.
Well, I guess here you can consider this as one of those experiments. The knockout human, where love was the gene, and the outcome wasn't death but lack of purpose. Judging by the people in this "show", I think it could be questionable which is worse...