Purpose

This purpose of life idea, as you all know by now, has always defeated me. I mean, like, from a very young age, I have been screamed at for not having any ambition. And ambition, as far as I understand, is to set and work towards a goal. And how the heck do you even set a goal without purpose? It's not like you can say eating idlis is your goal without making a purpose out of it - like saying I want to get into the Guinness Book for eating the most idlis at one sitting. (Though I have seriously felt that something must be wrong in the wiring of the brains of people who actually want to record these things, it's an opinion that seems to be more unpopular than otherwise.)

When the world was young (well, younger than now drat it. Asking me for the exact birth date of the world!), people had all sorts of questions in their minds. How do I know I exist, what is life, what is its purpose yada, yada. I mean, there are those who are content to chew the cud and there are those who HAVE to know why you chew the cud, where is the cud coming from and so on and so on. The rest of those questions is the reason why you have to suffer through subjects like Physics at school.

This 'purpose' thing, though. THERE was the root of philosophy (Though philosophy, originally, was what they called this inquiry into ALL those questions. There is a reason why you get a PhD - Doctor of PHILOSOPHY - in all subjects). AND, dare I say, Religion! So, you had a whole array of possible purposes - from heading towards Heaven or Hell to achieving oneness with the Creator and so on. Those were the days when you were up close and personal with natural forces AND were at their mercy. So, the ideas of 'purpose' tended to be as vast as the universe both in space and in time. The infinite and the eternal figured in the ideas. (Even these Heavens and Hells had infinite pleasures or agonies for an eternity, see.)

But, then, after we shut out the world by enclosing ourselves, Philosophy tended to shut out the rest of the universe and concentrate on humanity alone. In other words,  it tended to restrict itself to sociology. As in, what is the best Society to have - democratic, autocratic, capitalistic, communistic, whatever. So, the purpose of human life is to create an ideal Society and the purpose of an ideal Society is to foster human life. So, by perfect circular reasoning, we had found the Purpose! 

Why do we live? To create an ideal society. Why do we want an ideal Society? So that we can live. QED!

Anyway, that's for people who love to only talk about things with no intention of doing anything OR for people who are not content with managing their own lives and want to manage everyone's life. For the rest of us mango people, though...

"You need to have a purpose in life. What do you want to become - a doctor, engineer...what?"

Now THAT was what I was faced with. It was always what I wanted to BECOME when all I wanted them to do was to let me BE. (I have said that before? So? I mean, you are the guys who troll people for contradicting what they said before and you have a beef even when I say exactly what I said before? There's no pleasing some people, really!)

But Society has progressed a long way since the time when I was at school. All those ancient philosophers will be extremely gratified to know that humanity has at last found a universally acceptable answer to the purpose of life. The purpose of life is to...

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