Purpose of Life

Purpose of Life

“The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt

Did you ever take some time to think about the big life questions? Questions like-

• Why have I been given a life?
• What are my goals in life? And have I been able to reach them yet?
• How valuable is my life? Am I really loved by someone?
• Is life making sense anyway? Does my life matter?
• How will my future look like?
• And what happens after death?

These are not the easiest questions to answer… Today we are challenged to think about your life and about our future. It surely will be an investment that will be worth it if you give it a chance!

There are a few things most of us would agree upon. Life is a cruel task master, it never allows you to get hold of it. It is never a fair dealer and has no qualms in giving you a raw deal, and when you get hold of something it ensures that you have no time to enjoy what you earned. These are some of the most frequently pointed fingers against the phenomenon called life. Life can certainly test you to the core.

By life, I mean not the organism that nature created. I mean the organism we have evolved into, with the deep sense of identity. The person who knows who he or she is, have given yourself a value, often an unreal one. The person who feel superior to all around and even the master of the universe he exists in.

Many a philosopher had tried to decipher the code called life. Why is there a life?  Why should you be born to grow, reproduce and die? You bring nothing and you take away nothing. And in the interim between your birth and death, you seek all that you can never hold on to, all that is transitory and nothing that will stay forever. In fact even the knowledge you earn passes on with you. If you and I were the organism that nature created, we would not be discussing.

What we see after these reflection are strange, surprising, shocking and sometimes even hilarious. Ask yourself the question what your life means to you. Take time on it. You will get some very strange answers. The more you think of it the stranger the answers get. Initially you give it divine reasons, based on the religion, But as you think more the religious aspect start taking a back seat and it becomes more a philosophic reasoning. Reasoning that your life is to fulfil your duties, has been sold, quite successfully. But as you reflect on the end results and its importance, you suddenly realise that nothing you do makes one heck of a difference to the overall picture and despite all the earthshaking and sabre rattling,  in reality, you may as well never have existed. And finally you reach a point where the only thing that makes sense is to enjoy your life as it comes, every day on its own. Finally, you realise that the time spent on reflecting may well have been sent in having a great time and in reality, you have just managed to waste an awful lot of time.

For your life to make sense, there should be initially a sense of identity. “I” become the centre around which my life revolves. You see, understand, react, take and give in relation with your own self, the way you perceive and what you expect. You gauge the outcome in relation with what you expected and what the final outcome turned out to be. You perceive the world around in comparison with yourself. My next door neighbour who is a millionaire is a very rich man for me. But, to the guy down the lane, who is a billionaire he is not only not rich but probably a poor man. So it is meaningless to find equality in the society. You find solace in quotes like, “The Lord shall let the sinner grow like the palm tree.” You also find take comfort in the fact that there are people who are even less fortunate.

In searching for whether we can find meaning in our life, the first answer we need to know is who are we? Are we ‘Intelligent Animals’ coming into being via the Theory of Evolution or ‘Created Human Beings’ created by God. The answer we choose is critical. For if we are only Intelligent Animals, evolving from nothing, living in a World and Universe with no purpose, then we can only expect our lives to have no meaning or purpose and when we die, it will end in nothing. Whereas if we are ‘Created Human Beings’ created with an earthly body and an immortal soul, created by a Supreme Being, who is alive, who loves us and wants to communicate with us and be with us to guide and assist us in every situation good or bad. The latter is a very comforting one, but how reliable is this?

Evolving from nothing, living with no meaning or purpose, in a Universe and World with no meaning and purpose and when we die, returning to nothing? This is a definitely not a comforting thought. To live a life with nothing to achieve and no permanence is a very distracting thought.

There’s only one purpose of life: And that is to be happy. This is one perspective that has a lot of takers. However “Happiness” can’t be a goal in itself. Therefore, it’s not something that’s achievable. It need to be associated with something else to be real. And it may be more correct to believe that happiness is merely a byproduct of usefulness. This then changes the very outlook The Purpose of Life Is Not Happiness: It is Usefulness. Thus the need for activity comes back into the equation. Almost all things we do in life are just activities and experiences. Everyone wants to be happy in their relationships, with their jobs, and just in general. But obstacles can sometimes get in the way and prevent you from finding that happiness that you crave so much.

You can sometimes walk around with an unconscious need for meaning. This can be expressed in a sense of meaninglessness. You can find a short-term satisfaction in money, sex, drugs, music and sound, but sooner or later you discover that these are all temporary and do not offer lasting satisfaction. In fact, the elements that offer you happiness can be easily be set into two sides of experiences. You can find happiness and thus a purpose in doing things that give you direct pleasure. Going to a party of people you like, or on a holiday are certainly enjoyable activities and experiences. It make you happy and life seems to be a great place to be. Yet this form of purpose finding and enjoyment wears out once the occasion end, leaving but a feeling of hollowness behind.

There is a strong argument for the thought that the happiness that is fetched from the effort you put in that did or maybe even something that didn’t succeed, can be the true happiness in your life. This means that when the purpose you give your life is to stay happy, perhaps doing something that has a long lasting result that make a small but noticeable change may be a great option. This then could be one suitable answer to the big question.

Yet this is only the tail end of the big search. Finding happiness in life with action and contribution to the positive changes if life has a severely restricting reach. You need to be at the right place, at the right time with the right quality and quantity of resources at your disposal and the result as much as possible should reach the right people. This means that this option that can set up as one of your life’s purpose has its limitations. It cannot always be the wheels on which the wagon of life rolls on. There needs to be more option in our search for the right purpose.

Belief has kept humanity rolling in the forward direction for millennia. The early human worshipped primitive Gods and held simple values. Their beliefs have hence evolved into very complicated and in many cases self-contradicting versions. The simple belief that being a good, honest person, who worked hard for himself and family, who avoided confrontations and violence, and who shared what he had in excess with the one who didn’t,  has long since been shelved. Today’s values bring in the equation of God, His representatives on Earth, and what they had to say. This involves the changing of these diktats as times change. This also means that these will change as systems change and in the long run change systems to suit them.

However despite all its shortcomings belief has been one strong and functional purpose of life or more correctly the God that the religion believes in, has been. The belief that the all-powerful Being, who has been the root of all existence, who gave you the life, who decides what your life is going to be like and who decides the whens and wheres in your life, is the sole purpose of your life, had prevailed for millennia. Almost all religions adhere to the belief that it is in giving unto Him everything, including whatever you make, lies the very purpose of your life. While this principle of the deepest belief has often been questioned by those people who seek to find the cause and principles of all that seen or happens.

While the principles of belief has granted strong roots to religion being a purpose of life, it clearly has its critics. It also fails to answer a myriad questions satisfactorily. The answer that God’s reasons are for him alone to know, though it had held on strongly over centuries has posted question even in the firmest of believers, not to mention of the ardent critic.

The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? Psalm 27:12. This is the level of solace that belief gives.

Herein is the strength and the weakness of belief. It can take you across oceans by the strength of the written word.

Our faith can move mountains. Matthews 17:20, is the true level of belief that existed in the society, until the level of understanding in terms of scientific reasoning dawned.

Another perspective is the goal oriented one. Your life is there for you to achieve something. You could live for your family, your society, your nation, humanity or even for God. You could live to make something happen or prevent something happening.

We all know that setting goals is important, but we often don’t realize how important they are as we continue to move through life. Goal setting does not have to be boring. There are many benefits and advantages to having a set of goals to work towards. Setting goals helps trigger new behaviors, helps guides your focus and helps you sustain that momentum in life.

Goals also help align your focus and promote a sense of self-mastery. In the end, you can’t manage what you don’t measure and you can’t improve upon something that you don’t properly manage. Setting goals can help you do all of that and more.

Setting goals not only motivates us, but can also improve our mental health and our level of personal and professional success.

However there is a counter side to this. Chasing goals as a purpose of life has two major defects. One is the fact that after trying your hardest, if you do not see some level of tangible success, you are likely to feel disappointment. There are cases of people choosing to end their lives when faced with failures. For your goals to be truly the purpose of your life, it has to be hugely important to you. And when such a thing fails it is likely to affect you badly. There is also the question of what do we live for once the goal is achieved.

There is another romanticized perspective, living for someone else or living your live for others. This sounds like the ideal, but what would you feel if the other person does not respond in kind? Or if that person for some reason moves on. “I live for my family,” is a common enough theme. A father or mother living for their children is not something new. Yet separation is inevitable and this could well be the end of the purpose.

I add below a story that was sent to me by a friend, that got me thinking. The story is an imaginary one of a pair of twins in conversation in the womb. It puts life in a totally new perspective.

“In a mother’s womb were two babies. One asked the other: “Do you believe in life after delivery? ”The other replied, “Why, of course. There has to be something after delivery. Maybe we are here to prepare ourselves for what we will be later.”

“Nonsense,” said the first. “There is no life after delivery. What kind of life would that be?”

The second said, “I don’t know, but there will be more light than here. Maybe we will walk with our legs and eat from our mouths. Maybe we will have other senses that we can’t understand now.”

The first replied, “That is absurd. Walking is impossible. And eating with our mouths? Ridiculous! The umbilical cord supplies nutrition and everything we need. But the umbilical cord is so short. Life after delivery is to be logically excluded.”

The second insisted, “Well I think there is something and maybe it’s different than it is here. Maybe we won’t need this physical cord anymore.”

The first replied, “Nonsense. And moreover, if there is life, then why has no one ever come back from there? Delivery is the end of life, and in the after-delivery, there is nothing but darkness and silence and oblivion. It takes us nowhere.”

“Well, I don’t know,” said the second, “but certainly we will meet Mother and she will take care of us.”

The first replied “Mother? You actually believe in Mother? That’s laughable. If Mother exists then where is She now?”

The second said, “She is all around us. We are surrounded by her. We are of Her. It is in Her that we live. Without Her, this world would not and could not exist.”

Said the first: “Well I don’t see Her, so it is only logical that She doesn’t exist.”

To which the second replied, “Sometimes, when you’re in silence and you focus and listen, you can perceive Her presence, and you can hear Her loving voice, calling down from above.”

A story well said. And quite persuasive too. However for someone looking for holes it provide quite a few.

I have a question that has popped up in my mind. Do we really need to seek a purpose for life? We fact that we were born, we woke up today morning, there is nothing seriously wrong with you and you are reasonably confident that you will wake up tomorrow. Why don’t we just settle for the knowledge that we are alive and well?

Yet for those who seek, it is for you to find out. No one else can give you a true answer but yourself..