Purpose

Purpose

It’s a strong word isn’t it? What is one’s purpose in life…to steal a famous line, I firmly believe that questions like this can potentially kill.

Well, kill is an exaggeration; but surely you would have to agree that such question leads to more harm than good. Which makes me wonder if people belong to one of the following categories?

• People who have asked this question and hence are struggling to find an answer.  (or better the question have killed them)
• People who choose to not tread in such risky territories, so while the question has presented itself to them, they choose to look otherwise.
• People who are living in ‘ignorance’ and hence would never come even close to such lethal questions.  

For the first group of people; and I have a nick name: ‘cribbers’. I know its not the most creative one, or a new one…still if you really think about it, it fits quite well. So allow me to take you to the short journey of this kind of people. While most of the content is certainly arguable; I would request you to atleast give it a thought, cause it will take some time to understand the subtleties of the argument presented.

So Cribbers, they have this hobby to look for reasons to be unhappy; I mean whatever you give them, they will find defeats in anything and everything. But in this context, what I meant is QUITE different. Here I am typecasting a set of people who are driven by the greed, the greed is of knowing oneself better and better. They will increasingly ask difficult questions, and when they come up with an answer, they will start looking for another question. While this sounds good, surely means the person is evolving; they err on one of the most significant part of this journey. While it surely is difficult to doubt their goal or intention, for surely it is noble, what they lack a sense of (in the absence of a better word) maturity. I don’t remember where I read this; someone said somewhere that the real beauty of reaching a summit is the journey one takes and not necessarily the moment one plants the flag.

So this noble group of people are either completely unaware of it, or in their hyper philosophy discount the value of this rather simple yet powerful fact. So while they are exploring the answers to these ever complex question they forget to 1) celebrate the previous victory 2) enjoy the current trajectory.

One may argue that the real reason for this is the low self confidence or the self doubt that they have, for which keeps them occupied all the time. I’d give you that the argument has its merit, but I am more inclined to say that we are looking at the cause and effect in the opposite manner. So people in this category never really celebrate their success truly (which brings back to the point of enjoying the journey), this leads to a sense of self doubt which is more to do with how they have been living the life and thus is more of an effect than a cause. This is because in their eyes, they have never really been successful, for they are still very much struggling.

Well, am I going to present a solution for them, oh I wish…..

Second category, while I honestly believe such fraction is quite small, if not insignificant, cause living in denial is very hard and surely ain’t sustainable in the long term. So, either such people move to group 1 or 3, or do not really see a long term, which makes them no better than group one.

What excites me most is the third category, If you had asked me on the fly, I’d have said that such group is even rarer than the second one, and doesn’t even warrant any space, but if you really think about it, they are not really naïve or ignorant. They are the ‘successful’ people. They are the ‘happy’ bunch. They are the group who are really ‘aware’. Yes, again ‘aware’ is a big word, strong word which warrants much more space than the word we started with. But here I mean it in the simplest possible setting, which is that they know where they are, why they are there, and are working on where they want to be next.

I’d say these set of people are those who have addressed the question if not in a direct manner, but nonetheless have come up with an answer to it. So, they do not live in a Q & A mode, enjoy the journey they are in, takes up challenge as a part of life, do not obsess about goals and in between all this never get around getting into this mess. One may consider them truly lucky for ‘choosing’ to live the life in this manner. One may argue, it’s not a choice that one makes, but one is ‘wired’ in one way or the other. Well, yes again, it is correct to an extent, but the way I see it, it doesn’t sound smart be a part of an expedition where one regrets every moment of its journey until it meets it doom. For what its worth, I think the choice is still ours.

Honestly, I think most of us can not be put in this Red Green and Blue categories, most of us keep jumping from one state to other, which at time is driven by the exogenous circumstances. So coming back to the people languishing in the first group, I would like to tell them, that this journey of jumping from one group to another is also a part of life, so while it is quite difficult, one surely must strive to enjoy this Journey.