Purpose of Life
Recently I read an article on whether Life needs to have a purpose. It set me thinking about what I have observed around me and over a period of time, what I have drawn from my own experiences. All of us try and lead our Life with some or the other purpose. That purpose makes us work towards it, overcome all obstacles and thus, it occupies a portion of our lives for some time. Once that is achieved or may be, not achieved, a certain restlessness takes over and we start searching for the next purpose. And so it all goes on. Think of the student who works diligently to get very good marks to get into the best of colleges and have a career. Think of the same person after several years working fourteen hours a day, and maybe wondering is this what he really wanted to do? We see many people nowadays who cut short the same careers for which they had worked so hard and do something else which really gives them true happiness. These would be the same people who fifteen years back would have made scoring high marks and getting admissions in good colleges their purpose in Life. Think of the young girl hopelessly in love, fighting with her parents who, object to her decision to marry that person and who then marries against their wishes. Then, Think of the same girl after ten years, trying to balance household chores, manage kids and catch a local train everyday to reach her office, worrying about financial and other day-to-day problems. Would she be wondering is this what she set out to do ten years back when she had all those romantic dreams in life and the only purpose in Life at that time was to marry that person come what may? People take loans to buy bigger houses and cars and then are so busy working to repay those loans that they do not find the time to be in that house which they so proudly bought. What was the purpose in Life? Was it to buy a big house or was it to work harder and harder to repay the loan? Infertility clinics are overflowing with couples desperate to bring a baby home. They would do anything to achieve this purpose in Life. So they undergo all the hardship, spend all the time and money to achieve that. For several years after that, the child becomes the mother’s universe while the father is busy earning more to fend for it. After the child becomes an adult, suddenly the adult wants to find its own way and do its own things, irrespective of whether it makes his parents happy or not. The mother finds an empty nest and the father is too old and tired to care. To what end was all that hardship in the infertility clinic? The best years of your life are over bringing up the child, the child has flown from the nest now, maybe not even caring for whatever the parents sacrificed to bring him into this world and the parents are now old and having to think of how best to lead the twilight years. Purpose, purpose, purpose. Do any of us know what is the purpose finally? What are we all running after? Are we happy when we are busy running or are we all running blindly? I am also trying to find answers to this, so if any of the readers have thoughts to share, I shall be glad. I have started understanding and accepting that Life is not about running from one goalpost to another. The purpose of Life is to accept this moment that Life is offering you, live the moment fully and enjoy it without worrying about goals. Do your duties, enjoy what you are doing and stop worrying about the destination. By all means, all of us need to study, earn, marry, bring up children but we should try and do this without stressing ourselves out over the outcome. And if by some chance, some things do not turn out the way we would have wanted it to, accept it without regrets. It was not meant for you. We must try and reduce our needs. We should stop hankering for this, that and the other. A bigger car, a bigger house, a better paying job ….. if we get this as a natural outcome of life, that’s fine but if we do not then we should accept that too and move on. Because ultimately all these are temporary pursuits. Once we achieve it, we are still not content, we start running after the next thing.

Satparkash
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