Yeah, both these posts make sense. But sometimes I wonder if the most advanced Buddhist monks meditating on top of a mountain lead the most content and happiest of lives.
It depends on what you decide the purpose of living is.
Like Eileen says, when I've read books on the practice of Buddhism, they usually do focus more on the ability to let things go.
You are supposed to live in the Now.
It's okay to be engaged in the Now.
But if you cling to the Now when it becomes the Then, you no longer live in the Now.
People who live in the past are not really alive.
They've living in photographs and scrapbooks and memories and the ashes of Now.
You have to continually engage the Now to be alive, because the Now is the only moment you can act within; the past is gone, the future doesn't yet exist.
People can't let go because they can't embrace loss and death.
I hate to suggest watching The Matrix 3, since half of that movies sucks horribly, but even there it's got the basic lesson that everything ends, and you have to let go in order to live (or die, or whatever).