Been wondering for sometime over the idea of purpose and meaning in our lives.
Starting from personal things like:
Why am I doing what I am doing?
What’s the end to all the hustle, hard-work, care for the job?
To some of the greater things:
Why do we even exist?
What are we supposed to do with our lives?
What is life, universe and where are we all headed?
One school of thought is that we all need hope to keep us striving towards something. And not feel to be in an existential crisis. But hope is fucked as they say. From struggling for basic food and shelter, we’ve come a long way forward as a species. Still hope is based on our ever rising expectations.
So, instead of depending on hope maybe the purpose of life is to do the right thing and stop expecting anything in return. Seeing our actions as our duty not as a transaction to gain something from someone.
As an individual and collectively as humans it’s difficult to foresee where we are headed while we do those righteous things (build those dots). Only in the hindsight, all the dots connect somehow to create a purpose in our life. We just have to believe that the dots will connect in the future.
Our every action is a small drop in the vast sea. When you create something, inspire someone, etc. you create a ripple that may be carried forward by others. In the overall picture of life, it may prove to be a significant factor to make things better, more peaceful, create more love, etc.
When I think about this, from observation, nature doesn’t work in a discrete way but rather like a continuous gradient. The earth and the sun continuously move, so does the universe which is continuously expanding, the colours in the evening sky change gradually and not like palettes. Even in our lives when we want to achieve something, we create a system of smaller tasks, to dos, etc. that we can check continuously.
When we tick that tiny milestone off, that’s when we feel a rush of emotions. We feel excited, happy, truly alive in a sense.
