DOES LIFE HAVE A PURPOSE?

DOES LIFE HAVE A PURPOSE?

This is a very pertinent question, which has been asked by humab beings, since time immemorial, and down the ages. It is one of life’s basic questions, and a question that perhaps every human being has asked either himself or has asked others, at some point of time. And the amazing thing is that till today, no one has been able to satisfactorily answer this question.

This question itself has two parts, which need to be defined. One—what is meant by life? And two—what is meant by purpose? What is life, is a little easy to understand and answer, although by no means are we entirely correct when we answer this question. Most of us will say that life is what is there around us, on this planet; life begins with birth (or conception, if you want to be more accurate) and ends in death. Life means being born, and going through the stages of being an infant, child, teenager, young person, adult, an old man or woman, and finally, coming to the end, which we call death. This explanation will satisfy most of us, for it deals with the gross physical body that we can see and understand. But the problem is that our evolution and thousand of years of history is full of religious texts and religious leaders who have been talking about life which never begins and never ends, about a soul that we all possess, which is never born and never dies, about past births, rebirths, about individual consciousness and universal consciousness, about the Source, about a God who controls everything, about hell and heaven, etc, etc. As far as the average common man is concerned, these concepts tend to make his understanding of life more complicated, instead of simplifying it. So, for all practical purposes, life is what we see, from birth to death, life is reality as it exists for each of us. If there is life beyond death or before birth, we don’t know. We have just heard or read about these things—they are not our own personal experience, or that of most human beings.

As far as purpose is concerned, it is more difficult to answer this question. Here too, the purpose has to be divided into two parts—-the general purpose of existence and the specific purpose of the individual. We are always curious to know—-what is the purpose of life, of existence and what is my purpose here? As far as existence is concerned, there seems to be no purpose. Of course, we don’t know for sure and there is no one to tell us. But one can surmise that if anything or any activity had a fixed purpose, then that thing or activity would cease to exist, once the purpose has been fulfilled. If our purpose is to pass the exam, our studies will cease once the exam is over. If our purpose is to become an engineer or doctor, that purpose would end, once we become an engineer or doctor. Similarly, if existence had a purpose, the day the purpose if fulfilled, existence would come to an end. Since existence, or this world, with all its diverse objects has not come to an end, we can safely assume that either life has no purpose, or that if there is a purpose, it has not been fulfilled. Or maybe the purpose is dynamic, changing frequently. And since that purpose—whatever that may be—has not been reached in millions of years, it is unlikely that if will be reached in our lifetimes. So, in effect, we can forget about the purpose of existence, and take it that in all probability, existence and life on this planet has no obvious purpose, or has a purpose which is ever changing to such an extent that it is impossible to define it.

As far as individual purpose is concerned, one must remember that here too, if there is a fixed purpose, then, our life would end if the purpose is reached. Individual purpose, for most of the time, is dynamic. When one is a child, one’s purpose is to go to school, play and study. As one grows older, and is a teenager, or youth or adult, the purpose changes, from securing a degree, to a job to getting married to raising children. When one becomes old, many find purpose in the pursuit of religious texts, in the search for God, in taking care of grandchildren, in helping others etc. Finally, when all the earthly purposes are over, then one waits for the final purpose of life—which is death. It is at this stage, waiting for death that old people get depressed, frustrated, angry, irritable, withdrawn, develop a lot of psychological symptoms, and generally anger others. If some of them make God their purpose, or finding themselves and their soul as the purpose, it is good, because this purpose is likely to continue till their death. If at all one wants to have a purpose, it should be one which is unlikely to be fulfilled. Then, life can go on, following this purpose, without getting frustrated.

Since life or existence seems to have no obvious purpose, if one could also live one’s life without any obvious purpose, or with a changing dynamic purpose, minute to minute, then our lives will be aligned with that of existence. When both don’t have a purpose, it is easy to align the two. If we start thinking that existence has a purpose or if our life has a purpose, then it might be very difficult to align ourselves with this existence. But our human minds are so programmed that we must have some purpose, all the time, and eventually, this itself becomes our biggest problem, when we run out of purposes to follow. If one can live life minute to minute, with an ever changing purpose, but with no final or fixed purpose, one is likely to be less miserable and is likely to find immense happiness in just existing, just being, instead of becoming. Being is life, while becoming implies death.