“Your purpose in life is to find your
purpose, and to give your whole heart and soul to it.”
This clear and unequivocal statement was made Gautama Buddha (Buddha) in the 5th century BC. It is considered to be one of the foundation principles for the millions of followers of the Buddhist religion, founded by him.
He lamented that, while the real purpose for life on this earth was to do what is necessary to be happy, most people, because of their own doubts and misgivings, end up finding its attainment to be very elusive. He explained that life was like a journey on a long, winding bridge spanning two steep mountains, with a deep and wide gorge between them. The purpose of living was to cross over without falling victim to the many obstacles along the way. A few will succeed and enjoy nirvana, the ultimate state of happiness, but most will slip, stumble, or fall into the abyss, because they lost their purpose along the way. Buddha further stressed that we can only find our purpose by looking inside of ourselves, and never, by trying to copy others. He stressed that:
“No one saves us but ourselves. No one can, and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.”
There is a commonly held impression that most people will only discover their real purpose in life in a moment of inspiration. This, they claim, often happens after meeting the right person, or being in the right setting, or exposed to the right experiences, when the answer will suddenly appear in crystal-clear clarity. But although there are instances where this has indeed taken place, and some have found their calling in an unanticipated flash of coincidence, this is, at best, only a rare occurrence. To the great majority, the process of finding their life purpose can be equated to a statue being carved from a block of granite. Where every experience, good or bad, every failure or every success, every relationship and every disappointment, and all the moments of happiness or sorrow will each chip away a piece of the block, until nothing is left but the true self; a genuine composite of all the events that together have combined to produce the individual. As Professor Thomas Gilovich, a highly respected American author and social psychologist, so succinctly described it:
“We are the sum total of our experiences. Those experiences, be they positive or negative, make us the person we are, at any given point in our lives.”
But there are many who disagree with the statement that the purpose in life is just simply to be happy and contented with it. This to them is far too restrictive, and does not fully account for the myriad of activities that can give reason to living, and purpose to life;
-The naturalists have no doubt that life’s purpose was just simply to be alive and to continue the process of evolving into a better and more effective being. Alan Watts, a respected English philosopher and expert on the Eastern religions, in explaining this, suggested:
“The purpose of life is to be alive.
It is so plain and so simple.”
-To the truly religious person, Christian and non-Christian alike, the true purpose of life is primarily to know, and to get closer to their God. To the Christians, ‘knowing and enjoying God’ is the universal purpose in life. In Islam, ‘the meaning and purpose of life is to fulfill the requirements to return to God.’ And to the devout Hindu, ‘the real purpose in life was to do good deeds and achieve Nirvana.’
-There are yet there are some, especially the more self-centered ones, for whom the purpose is to take as much as possible, while ignoring the needs of others, -and there are those who share the views of Leo Rosten, the very successful Jewish-American author and scriptwriter, that life can only be considered to be successful if it is used in helping other, more needy beings:
“The purpose of life isn’t to be happy; it’s to be useful, to be honorable, it’s to be compassionate, it’s to matter, to feel that it’s made some difference that you have lived.”
And again, despite the apparent volume of literature supporting the need for a purpose in life, there have been, and continue to be many skeptics throughout the ages who have insisted that there are none; -Charles Darwin, the famous Anthropologist whose Origin of the Species is a classic in anthropology, was convinced that with man, as with the rest of the animal kingdom, there was no reason at all to assume that life has an ultimate purpose or meaning. -His views were echoed by the great French Philosopher and Nobel laureate, Albert Camus, who insisted that, “The absurdity of the human condition is that people search for external values and meaning in a world that has none, and is indifferent to therm.”-And Stephen King, currently one of America’s most prolific and highly successful authors of fiction and supernatural topics, who is himself a declared skeptic, has regularly admonished others who believed in a purpose to life, with such comments as, “You discarded most of the lies along the way, but hold on to the one that said life mattered.” They all viewed trying to assign a purpose to living as merely conjecture, and that, in fact, there is no real purpose other than survival.
But in fact, like everything of importance in nature, there can be no single answer to the true purpose in life. Each individual is given the opportunity to choose his own answer, and to embrace his life as he chooses. The fundamental purpose of living was never to disrupt or destroy, but rather to enhance and improve, and this indeed, is nature’s intention. And it is never to follow others who appear to be happy and successful, but rather to seek and to fulfill one’s own destiny, so that when the end arrives, one could reflect on a life well spent. Perhaps the greatest mistake that many of us make is to begin by identifying our goals in life without first identifying our life’s true purpose. For without a true purpose, there can be no meaning for living, nor indeed can there be any sense of direction or satisfaction. This is precisely what the very successful Baptist minister, author and founder of the famous Saddleback church, Rev. Rick Warren, so very wisely concluded:
“Without a purpose, Life becomes motion without meaning, activity without direction, and events without reason.”
-This indeed is the real meaning for having a purpose in our life. It gives reason to living, impetus for achieving, courage to continue growing, and above all, confidence in being who we are meant to be.
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