Life is Meaningless — and Why That’s a Good Thing.
If I told you that you had a purpose, and that all you had to do in life was work towards that, and that only, how would you feel? Or, consider this. You’ve geared your entire life towards fulfilling that specific objective you were put on earth to accomplish, and you finally managed to achieve your goal. How do you feel? You’re elated! Why wouldn’t you be? You’ve just finished doing the one thing that gives you a sense of purpose, gives you meaning. Now what? Emptiness. There’s nothing left for you now but to contemplate oblivion.
That is not a future you’d like to imagine. I believe that we are creatures without any purpose on this earth. If we were, we’d be doing a horrible job of what we were supposed to. I mean, how many of us actually do what makes us feel happy? How many of us choose not to go against the grain, and fall in with everyone else?
If, instead of the previous scenario, I told you that there was no higher meaning to life, no great plan, how would that make you feel? Terrible. At first, you would feel lost, directionless, the same feeling you had when you were a teenager, facing life for the first time with your entire future ahead of you, with no concrete box you could fit yourself into. Yes, that would feel terrible — but — that also means you have choices.
If there’s no specific thing you’re born to do — no specific person you were meant to be, that is the greatest gift of all — Freedom. This is the one sole thing that humans have worked towards after centuries of oppression, and now that it is within arm’s reach, we’re afraid. What if it doesn’t taste as good as we imagined it should? Well, you’ll never know if you don’t try.
If there’s no one thing we’re supposed to be, if there’s no one single plan to life that we’re supposed to follow like an instruction manual — what does that mean for us? That means — we get to live life according to our choices. There’s no pattern card to base life upon — so why not create your own principles and systems to live according to? Some people are highly critical of this mindset. According to them, there’s no better formula for anarchy. This idea has been around for a long time — and it still hasn’t given rise to a full scale revolution yet — I think we would be the better for it if there were to be one.
The freedom that this idea gives is intoxicating. It had seized hold of our imaginations in the past — but why have we let go of it, and settled for an easier path? We’ve gone back to our old ways — the path of least resistance, where we don’t have to think, don’t have to act, where we have a secure job from nine to five, bread on the table and a roof over our heads.
Now, these are things I’m not saying we should do without, but, why be a passive recipient of fate? If one chose to do those things — planning out life in an orderly fashion — get married, have kids, work, retire and die — at least let that be a choice, instead of simply doing things just because they are things which are usually done in the usual scheme of things. If one chooses to live life differently, wonderful. That is up to the concerned individual, and nobody else’s business.
The thing I’d like to point out here is, choice. We have choices — nothing is forced upon us. If we live life passively, letting things happen, that is a choice. We could have dealt with things differently, but we chose not to — that is a choice as well. If we chose not to react, or if we chose to do just the opposite, that is a choice.
Life is inherently meaningless — that is a chant that has been taken up in the modern era — one that existed long ago, and whose echo is heard again, now and then through the ages. This is nothing but a cry for freedom — the freedom to do what we like, and the freedom to take responsibility for our own actions, or the lack of them. This mindset is incredibly freeing — we are no longer held prisoner at the the hands of anything — society, culture, tradition, or education. We are free to forge the paths we would like to walk on. We are free.
Sangamithra Nataraj is the author of Arianna’s Quest : The Chronicles of Elthry’ha Book One, available on Amazon.
Originally published at http://wordsmyonetruelove.blogspot.com.
