Making Sense of Life

A careful dissection of life reveals that every phase has a purpose. Right from childhood we move towards achieving a particular goal that nature has set for us for that period. Right from learning to feed and walk to being able to stand up against the world, we are continuously learning, struggling to achieve our goals. Never once do we question the authority that sets these goals for us. Never once do we feel angry or frustrated. However during the course of our journey through life, all of us most definitely have asked this question at least once.

I have often been asked “what is the purpose of life?” All of us have been faced with this nagging question sometime or the other in life. And in our quest to find the answer, we ignore the obvious and keep searching for a reply that is comforting. We listen to spiritual gurus; we learn meditation and yoga, give up non vegetarian food and try everything under the sun that gives us a false sense of well being. We start enjoying the quest rather than complete it. And realize how futile the attempts were only when death stares us in the face.

Now that we have talked about the impending question, let’s explore the probable answer a bit. When is it that you feel alive, that you were happy to be born? Is it when you are working yourself to death or when you are in the company of your friends or is it when you are having a drinking binge? Or is it when you are living your life free of lies and doing what you enjoy? Isn’t the answer obvious?

I have always had people coming up to me eager to free themselves from the corporate trap and at the same time telling me they like winning. That is how strong our mental programming is. We have been bound to winning. Darwin simply put that feeling into words. If you look around you will notice that it isn’t just the fittest that are surviving. The world is ruled by the weak. I am not putting Mr. Darwin’s theory under doubt but I am a spiritualist not a scientist.

If you are eager to find your purpose in life, get a life first. Do not fool yourself into believing you rule the world while being bogged down into a morass of monocrity. Make time for yourself and do what you enjoy doing. If you find yourself searching for purpose, it is because you are not happy with the direction of life. If you have been measuring your success with promotions and money, maybe you need to change the measurement units to happiness and content. Every one of us has been given the choice of the blue pill and the red pill. Life outside the matrix might not be very glamorous but it definitely is satisfying.

If you have been bored to read the above few paragraphs, let me try to put it all down in a few easy words.

• The purpose of life is to be happy and content.
• Stop measuring success with material things and start measuring it by the amount of happiness.
• There is nothing wrong in losing in the material world. What counts is how much you have succeeded with yourself.
• Decide between the glamorous life in the matrix and the happy life outside it.

So the next time you find yourself asking about the purpose in life, you know what the answer should be!