Once I heard that everything in life is fixed and predetermined. If someone overdoes a thing he does it for very short period and vice-verse. Though I came across this thought in terms of eating sweets, yet I find it fitting in many spheres of life. Happiness for instance seems to be very well adhering to this unsaid rule. Through the courses of my life I have discovered the more the happy I am at some point of time, the shorter that time period tends to become. Though it seems that this realization or wisdom should have made me better adapted or rather immune to changes of emotions, yet I find myself more puzzled.
In this enigmatic world of human beings everybody seems to be running after something. A small child is running around to catch hold of all attractive things around him. Bigger children run for compliments of adherence from their parents, teachers and society. They try to gain better marks in school, better sportsmanship on playground and merits of compliance at home. Teenagers seem to be getting aware of the bigger world and run for means to survive and conquer in it. Grown ups are concerned with family and professional matters while the old ones with their health and descendants. At every stage of life the nature of quest changes but the thirst remains the same. Even those who proclaim to be above all aspirations are in effect trying to aspire for the knowledge of so called ultimate truth or salvation. The question that puzzles me is not why everybody is after some thing or the other, but rather what do we actually want. What is the aim of our life?
Time and again I have been told that all these desires and aspirations is what life is all about. But then this raises many perturbing questions in my mind – Is the human life-cycle pre-designed to follow a fixed path and is it just about chasing futile aspirations? Is the congenital inheritance of ages of human consciousness meaningless and that it doesn’t matter whether a person lived today or hundred years back? Is human existence purposeless and a completely deterministic phenomenon?
Going through different walks of life I have found different arguments to defy my indicative hypothesis. Sometimes I find everything so systematic and perfectly poised in space as well as time that I get the feeling that God had indeed created us to savor the wonderful experience of being a “living” thing. Such ideas are inspired mainly by the wonders of God’s creation and the interconnection between the various things around us. There is so much to see, experience and learn that life seems to be running out of time. Time gone cannot be relived and moments past just remain memories for lifetime. This gave me the idea of living in the moment or “pal”.
Another line of thought inspired me to believe that perhaps we could be more proactive towards God’s creations’. It’s not enough to just observe things around us. We must also respect and conserve them. The best form of conservation is perhaps to conform to the ways of life. It occurred to me that all of us are assigned some role or the other at different stages of life and it is our duty to execute them in the best of our spirits. God perhaps tests all of us with plethora of responsibilities and our duty lies in identifying and executing them to the best of our efficiency. Perhaps life is all about carrying individual and social responsibilities towards all institutions of the world viz. family, education, religion, industry, spirituality, social relations etc. This notion for me makes life analogous to a stack of “debts”, which have to be cleared during the life-cycle of the individual.
However this “pal” concept portrays this world as a museum and a living being as a tourist in it. Now since all this museum has is tourists, therefore there cannot be anything new in the museum. This will eventually make this museum a place of boredom. Hence the notion of contributing or rather “making this world a better world” came into my mind. Though the “debt” concept talks about being proactive, all it does is helping maintain the museum. It occurred to me that we cannot be just passive visitors to this world. There has to be an element of giving back in order for the world to perpetuate. It’s like paying for one’s existence and adding value to human knowledge and experience. Though this idea associates certain sense of purpose to human existence, it seems to be depriving them from freewill and pushing humanity towards determinism. I see this idea as life being God’s “investment” in hope of better returns.
Any world (of course I am referring to the world of humans) needs to remember its past, hold its present and prepare for the future. Past is essential because it provides us with behavioral instances of the world we are living in. These instances act as guidelines in planning for the future. Without past, present and future are meaningless. Present needs to be consolidated otherwise it will have no future. Future should be sought after in order for the world to perpetuate. “Pal” approach awes the beauty of existence and passes on the reminiscences to others while the “Debt” approach maintains the status quo by being a conformist and the “Investment” approach creates value with the invested virtues.
