The best advice, is advice given by those that are there to care.
However, if God does not exist and we are on this earth just by chance then can our lives have any real purpose? The answer would have to be no wouldn't it? Then again perhaps being here by chance allows us to add purpose to our own lives. Instead of having one higher being give meaning to everyone's lives we give meaning to our own life.
If the first option is true and God has put us each here, in the situations that we are in, with the problems, the struggles, the love, the happiness that we, at this very moment, have happening in our lives then should we then just let God set our paths for us believing that our destinies have already been decided and somewhere along the way we will discover our true purpose? Or will we ever really know our true purpose? Perhaps we will just believe that we do have a purpose without ever knowing what it is. But the question arises, even when I should believe and not ask why I still ask, why did God create us with such hatred in our souls? Why do children in third world countries know what it means to never be full? Why do terrorists highjack planes and crash into buildings killing themselves and thousands of others? Why does love end and hearts break? What is the purpose for there to be hatred, violence, jealousy, pain, and sadness? Do knowing these things make us better people, stronger people, more willing to work through our differences because we all know the same feelings? Do we grow closer as a 'human race' and not just as 'races' when we see our families murderer, our children burned, and our sisters raped? Do our tears teach us that we must know sadness in order to know happiness?
But must we believe in God to believe that we have a purpose? Or can we still have a purpose without an infinite being looking down on us from heaven?
If we believe God does not exist we must then make our own destinies, we must make our own purposes and set for ourselves the path that we will follow through our lives. If we are left to make our own purpose for being on this earth then can there be such a thing as chosing the wrong path since we are left to chose for ourselves? Can we, when making our destiny, make it wrong? How can anything be wrong if everything is left to us? Whether we help others or whether we kill others it is left to us and to us what we do serves our purpose. Does anyone, in their own eyes, believe they are wrong? Does a murderer think killing is wrong or does he believe that his purpose in life, which he designed of his own accord, is to thin the poplulation and weed out those who he thinks is serving the wrong purpose in life?
In setting our own raison d'etre we can not be wrong. We chose what is right for us, for each individual. The rest of society may believe that killing is wrong, that the murderer must be insane if he believes he is serviving a purpose by killing, but that is the belief of society and not the individual. If we believe in this way, that as an individual we are right in our paths, and as a society others are wrong, then we can also use that belief of doing wrong to understand why children are starving, why people kill, why hearts break, and why we feel pain. We can blame individuals for everything that is wrong with the world, we don't have to believe that there is purpose in murder we just have to believe that someone was wrong, and I think believing that is a lot easier than believing something we can not see nor understand. Blaming someone standing in front of us, someone who we can hear and see and touch is much easier than believing in someone we have and never will know anything about other than what is spread through prayer and preach.
I'm not sure what I believe, whether there is a God, or whether as individuals we are our own Gods, but I do believe that there is a plan for everyone. If God exists then he has a plan. I will never know what his plan is, for the world or probably for myself, but we all must have a purpose. And if God does not exist then I consciously or subconsciously have a plan, I may change my purpose in life as the years pass, I may add to my purpose, but I do have a purpose. And either way, no matter how large or small my purpose in life is it is still important to the continuation of human kind because even a puzzle with five thousand pieces still has a hole when one piece is missing. Each of our lives is a puzzle piece, we all have our own place in the puzzle, our own identifying shape and orientation but without the pieces around us, even the pieces we will never see because they are so far from our area of the puzzle we still join together to make one picture and can not afford to miss a single piece. Everyone is important in this world, and every difference is important because rarely will you see a puzzle with identical pieces and never will you find a puzzle that is complete when pieces are missing.