Life has no pre set purpose (other than biological). That's why you are free to do what you want. If life had a preset purpose, you would be bound by it. Happiness and other emotions are biological mechanisms for survival. We have free will, within biological and social limits (both can be transcended with ingenuity, but there will always be limits) Consciousness is a subject of a wide study...kindly read the work of Christof Koch, David Chalmers, Dan Denett and others. In my opinion it is real...but first you need to define what you mean by consciousness