I don’t know the purpose of my life, so what?

This I am writing in response to a recent post by Alok Rodinhood Kejriwal on FB asking us all to share what we felt was the purpose of our life.

Till the time of writing, nearly 150 people reverted with their thoughts on the subject.

Interestingly, the answers could be classified into three basic categories.

1) Out-bound (63%)

2) Inward-looking (30%)

3) Undecided/Searching (7%)

I tried assessing the most used expressions in the responses and found that the top ten were:

1. Happy, Happiness, plus also: Joy, Laugh, Enjoy, Smile
2. Life, Living, Live (alive)
3. People, Lives & also expressions like ‘others’, world, society & earth
4. Money, wealth
5. Help, helping, Giving Back
6. Travel, Journey, experience/ing
7. Love
8. Purpose, Passion, Dream
9. Learn
10. Freedom, Nirvana, Mukti.

Tracking this post, I was reminded of a session with my teacher way back in 2001-02, when he asked us the same question. We were about twenty of us. Surprisingly, before anyone could even attempt to answer, the teacher was quick in adding, ‘whatever you may think, it is now, it’s not going to last for more than 6 months in your head.’

We thought we were certainly better than that.

Perhaps teacher also realized he made a mistake in assessing our true potential and immediately corrected himself by saying, ‘3 months, I feel, would be more appropriate.’ Then he took a few names from amongst us and declared, these people would forget whatever they say, even before walking out of the class.

He was an indeed a tough teacher.

In following months we realized why he made that statement about us despite his infinite love, good wishes and blessings for our well being.

There are 3 things about this stuff called – ‘purpose-of-life’:

1. They are empty words unless followed with diligence.
2. Diligence means trying to achieve our purpose every moment, starting now. There would be times when we won’t be able to do it, we would fail. For example, Alok has defined his purpose as ‘To make people happy.’ He may not be able to achieve it every time. Yet even when it doesn’t happen, one doesn’t quit.
3. Having achieved Diligence, the next stage involves going deeper into ‘the purpose’ for finer details. For instance my friend Hitesh Bhatia commented ‘To be happy and contend’. He may help himself by defining what can make him achieve that. He may thus say, ‘by doing xyz’ or ‘by helping people with abc’, I try to achieve my purpose. These detail-points then become the ‘specific targets’ for achieving the otherwise ‘generic’ purpose of our life. They are very important lest we get lost.

This is a pure mind-game, where only a disciplined and committed mind can make any progress. Further, no success can be judged in short time. It can be realized only over a prolonged period, meaning years. Finally, our purpose of life is for just one person in the world and that’s us.

This is a very interesting initiative and I congratulate Alok for coming up with this idea. This will really benefit all who participate and follow.

Further, in our responses, while 93% of people seem to know the purpose of their life, let me write a few lines for the ones who said they were still searching. And that is the true purpose of writing this post. I too once was one of them.

I had taken my query to my teacher and he instead asked, ‘What you think will bring you unlimited happiness at this point in time?’ Knowing I won’t have a ready made answer, he said, find that and then go after it.

Somehow at that point I couldn’t help asking, ‘Teacher, and until I find it?’ And now the teacher replied, ‘let finding it be the purpose of your life.’

I had no more questions ever after on the subject in my life.

Good wishes to all.