“Purpose of Life” – a lot has been written and even more has been said about it. Like an event of national significance, everyone around us has their opinion about it. From newspaperman to CEO of a company everyone including you and me has tried at some point in our life to give life meaning. We all have tried to define life in a way that suited our context or our experiences.  But what does it means when we say that we should try to find the purpose of our life and then pursue it till the end. Is it just another fancy word for finding a reason to feel enthused in our daily routine life which starts to feel monotonous over some time or is it just another construct of our society to keep us busy when we have risen over the basic survival needs of food and housing? We are so hooked up on this so-called finding a purpose that even in our novels, tv shows, or movies we often see that when a protagonist is feeling down and lost some old guy comes around giving him a lecture about founding a meaning in life and then protagonist suddenly transforms into an ideal guy that we wish to be. And after watching such a scene haven’t we all wished for some old saintly figure to appear in our lives to give us advice of our life and then disappear so that we can transform like our hero. Let me end this suspense now and here , in most of the cases it is us who are going to find purpose in our life and that old figurine may never appear.

With limited knowledge of life and spirituality along with the little experience that I have gathered along the way, I have realized that Life doesn’t come with a pre-defined purpose. There is no hand manual of humans that can tell us, okay this human is capable of this only and should be used under these certain conditions. In reality , it’s us who give meaning to our lives and define what purpose we want to give it. It does not have to be a global goal that would change the world or revolutionize how humans are going to live in society rather it can be as small as showing love to street dogs, feeding them if possible regularly. this won’t solve the earthly crisis but will surely make you feel contented or even blissful.

  Life is like a blank canvas given to every individual and the only difference is the colors (situations you are surrounded with, resources you have, or to some extent kind of family you got, etc.) each of us gets. Some fortunate ones are blessed with bright colors and some of us are handed with the ordinary ones. Something to ponder over is that whether the type of colors we get are going to define what are we going to make of our life or whether it is in our hands? If you think of the former then no matter how bright your colors might have been or how high maybe the  quality of your brush you may still mess it up and if you agree with the latter part then my friend don’t you fret about anything because if you have decided that you are going to take full authority of life no matter how bad or good our colors are you are going to make a beautiful painting. And when we make ourselves accountable to our life we automatically start doing meaningful things in our lives.  We become more and more mindful of our actions which instinctively helps us to define the purpose of our life.

I am blessed to know an old man in our town who from the beginning of his days was known for feeding stray dogs and providing clothes and shelter to them in the harsh winters of Punjab. Since then his compassion for animals has seemed to grow. He won’t be changing the world in a revolutionary way but he will be changing the world for a better place. He found his purpose in feeding the strays and if you see the look on his face when he sees those strays happy and well-fed you will find him to be in bliss.  

We are given this beautiful life and are blessed by the universe with the independence to choose how we go about life and give life a meaning according to our taste. Nothing said above is unique, it has been already said and written by some of the greats  but still, we tend to forget. I hope you all are reminded of how beautiful this life is and how we can make it into a significant one.

P.S – this is the first article that I have ever written and if you find any mistake or find something wrong with it please accept my sincere apologies. 

And here is a link to Swami Ji explaining the same in a much more beautiful way >  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZKXgYHFR9Y