ostGeneration
I have no story as the
purpose and meaning of life is a mystery, so far. Because of our deep
involvement in the humdrum of lived life, we normally do not ponder over the
question of the purpose of life. The question arises in our minds usually when
confronted with the perceived meaninglessness of life. When, like Leo Tolstoy,
we begin to feel, ``My Life is a stupid, mean trick played on me by somebody.''
We may also ponder over life's meaning when we endorse Macbeth's view that life
is ``a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing''.
Or, like Shakespeare wrote, when we feel that ``We are such stuff/ As dreams
are made of, and our little life/ is rounded with a sleep...'' Homer says,
``Insignificant mortals, who are as leaves are, and now flourish and grow warm
with life, and feed on what the ground gives, but then again fade away and are
dead.''
Whether
or not you know the purpose of life, this life should be something
meaningful for you; the way you spent time should make you feel genuine
satisfaction. If you become a money-making machine (as the world wants us to
be), you might get some sort of satisfaction but that would be very short-lived
-for, in the long run, even a non-believer gets some sort of doubt; you feel
some sort of uneasiness.... That's why I am saying, only do those things that
give you deep satisfaction. That's living a meaningful life.
So how to make your life
more meaningful? First, we should think... all sentient beings experience
pleasure and pain. All sentient beings wish to be happy. Because of the power
of intelligence, human beings have much better ability to avoid suffering. In
the meantime, somehow, that very intelligence is also the source of problems. There's
too much stress. The more educated you are, the more expectations you have (and
others have of you), your hopes and fears too are intensified because of memory
and intelligence. Animals have less expectation, they deal with immediate
threats.
We should use our
intelligence in such a way that it is a source of happiness, not as aggravator
of anxiety and stress. Pay more attention to common experience, common sense
and realise that compassion brings us all together.... When we learn from one
another, it becomes the basis of genuine harmony.
Ralph
Waldo Emerson put it very beautifully: “Purpose of life is not to be happy. It
is to be useful, to be honourable, to be compassionate and to have it make some
difference that you have lived and lived well.”—
