I don't know if that is an universal query fired by a usual mind, but I am quite sure, there are many many people who have asked this question, to themselves and to others, and probably all of us have done that sometime or the other.
Kurt Vonnegut is one author, I can never get bored of. Its like Asterix and Obelix. I read 4 of them yesterday sitting in Crossword without buying even one. I know that is not good, but there are certain people, who always have pledge to start buying more first hand books as a tribute to the author, when they start getting payed enough. Nobody ever gets paid enough, most of the times, is another matter.
So that was not the point. The point was straight forward. What was/is the purpose of my life. I write 'was' as an option because, it clearly may be that I have already fulfilled the purpose of my life and now am just killing time to get to the next level of the game. I also write 'may be'.
What does Kurt Vonnegut have to do with this. Yes he does. You have to read 'The sirens of the Titans' to know what I am talking about. And you have to read 'Cat's Cradle' to know what it could mean and how easy could the answer to life be (I am talking about the end of the book)
So where does this question come from. Yes, it comes more often than not, when one is at work and one is saying 'What the hell am I doing here'.
One day it had occured to me it was for love, like the bollywood movies say. But two entities created for the purpose of them to be loved by each other was a very strange idea. Atleast, it wasn't a human kind of idea. I mean humans wouldn't create such a thing. Or may be they would. Who knows.
Or may be it was for love. Love of oneself. To treat yourself in the way you wanted. Enjoy the life and all that crazy stuff. The other day, my current-room-mate was telling me about Ayn Rand's philosophy of objectivism being something like true happiness lies in detachment from everything else. That's the kind of stuff I am talking about in this paragraph, the true happiness thing. Doing what makes you happy, there is a catch though, how many people really know what makes them happy.
I can never forget the example that James Gliek give in the book about Chaos, he says something like, if you shuffle a shuffled pack of cards, you'd never know if it was for good or worse. He was talking about Chaos, but he could even be talking about life, what a chaos it is.
So coming back to the point about Ayn Rand, the philosophy, I find quite similar to the ancient Hindu philosophy of Sanyas and all, I mean, did it not say to detach yourself from worldly things and desires, and that is the only path to Nirvaan. The exact opposite philosophy I read some days back by Vivekananda, (its not his philosophy probably, but he was standing in a poster and this quote was standing next to him) "One who does not live for others, his life is a waste".
There is one thing I have quite clearly set in my mind, that nobody in the world probably really knows about this stuff. May be Paulo Coehlo does, but all that he writes is too much to believe all the time. May be that's how truth is. Or may be it is Ayn Rand. But what about the ancient hindu scriptures, and Gautam Buddha and Vivekananda, and Jesus Christ said something about Love everyone or Prophet Mohammad.
Does anyone know the purpose of his life?
May be just asking this question over and over again, is the purpose. May be there is absolutely no purpose, may be we are just wasting our time. May be there is a real purpose of the life. Something that we'll never know. May be we are just sailing molecules, who have no individual purpose, but are together solving a purpose, by creating this chaos in the world? May be. The little molecule. May be
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