LIFE’S PURPOSE: THE GARDEN BENCH AND FEW REVELATIONS

Background

The cemented garden bench, across my house, with bright golden yellow borders and white cross members, looks perfect a partner for the strange tree painted on the wall next to it. The unnaturally multi coloured leaves, all imprints of hands, make the white wall come alive. I do not know what the artists want to convey. To me, it represents a declaration of the arrival of the new generation, colourful and different. The symbolic leaves, reveal the unmistakable urge for attachment despite the deliberate choice of detached existence, uneasy coexistence of silent symmetry with loud asymmetry and subtle yet visible order in the chaotic riot of colours. 

During day, the bench and the tree on the wall merge into insignificance with the surroundings. But as darkness descends and the caretaker switches the light on, they transform the area into a surreal spectacle, seen to be believed.

Occasionally few, of those ‘palm-print artists’, occupy the garden bench, in a huddle, mostly loud, sometimes in hush-hush mode, but always deliberately unmindful of our existence.

The Trigger

The post-supper conversation between my wife and I sitting, out on our veranda chairs, is a ritual we rarely miss. Our neighbour a septuagenarian widower joins us nowadays. We find something to talk about every day.

It was the first of February and we were half way into to our discussion when I noticed the caretaker of our colony sitting still on the bench.

Appointed for security, he is of minimal security value.  His primary job is to switch on and switch off the water pump that fills our colony’s overhead tank. Very particular in switching it on, which he does many times a day, he often forgets to switch it off. Sensitive to water wastage, I often switch it off. His disarming demeanour makes it difficult for me to scold him, though I do at times. At 72, he is active, always happy and happier after a glass of toddy, which he manages, at least once a day. Resourceful, he easily manages more. Despite the hard life behind him, he carries no grudge.

Sitting motionless on the highlighted bench, he seemed like one who had achieved the ultimate bliss through denouncement. Whether it was toddy induced stupor or age inflicted deafness, I don’t know, he remained oblivious to the sound of water gushing out of the overflow pipe. I shouted out to bring him back to the duty-bound world. He immediately rushed to switch off the motor and came back with the excuse always given and his characteristic smile. Thereafter, he returned to his room to sleep.

As he walked away, I remarked, look at him! He lives for the moment. Neither today nor tomorrow seems to worry him. He has no savings and estate to leave behind with an elaborate will. His daughters are married and wife has a part-time job in the nearby pump. He is not bothered about how his old age will pan out. He lived like that all his life. Content with his state of meagre existence he lives to enjoy the moment.

Think of it, he is a lucky man.

In the hope of making our old age safe and secure, we exhaust ourselves and our lives, struggling to accumulate and hoard things? If that wasn’t enough, we start working to secure the future of our children and even the ‘yet-not-thought-of’ grandchildren. The self-imposed burden of defining their destiny becomes the very purpose of our life and the sole driving force of existence.  Though we know of the uncertainty, today holds and tomorrow brings, we are relentless in our toil in vain.

This realisation compelled me to ask my wife and my neighbour, “What could be the purpose of his life?” “What is the purpose of our lives?”

The Counter

Anniey, my wife is a very intelligent and practical lady. A gold medalist of her times in academics, she is well read and keeps an ear to the ground. “Well,” she said, “He must surely have had some aspirations in the past and some now.” He would have wanted to have a house, wear good clothes, eat good food, travel. Surely every man and woman would want to have all that”.

Yes. Certainly. Everyone in whatever state he or she is born into, would want to become better. Desire to own, improve one’s own state of existence, part take in comfort should be our aim. I believe its our duty to be richer than when we were born.

That is not what is marketed by all sorts of Gurus as ‘purpose of life’. They tend to add halo to our existence and in the process complicate a simple natural process called life.

Life’s Purpose

The ultimate advice gurus give us, is to define the purpose of life. They convince us to connect our present with the future and life beyond, compelling us to do things, normal living things are not supposed to. Most of us are convinced that we Humans are the only ones blessed with possession of Soul.

Even though every one of us know, that there is a definite end to each one of us, we toil today to live tomorrow and even dictate the life after. Many of us want to leave something movable or immovable for posterity. The driving force, accepted or denied, behind such action of ours is the desire to be remembered by our progeny, their progeny and even the society well after we're gone. Most of our actions under the banner of ‘purpose of life’ is undertaken solely with the aim of leaving our footprints, hoping that it lasts for ever[i].

Life's purpose is not a recent discovery. It has been spoken of even in old tests. If we should be driven by a life's purpose now, even those before us would have felt the same!

Examining their life and its outcomes could help us define the purpose of our life and draw up pursuit strategies.

World’s Greatest

The most powerful student of Aristotle, Alexander III, mostly known as Alexander the Great, in 33 short years of his life, ruled ancient Macedonia for 13 years, most of which was spent in ruthless empire expansion. There is no written word about what his purpose of life was, but whatever it was, he would have done everything, with all the force at his command to fulfil it. If it was the creation of an endless empire, or a way of life he wanted others to follow, everything he created over unimaginable bloodshed and countless mutilated bodies disintegrated soon after he died.

Genghis Khan, who created the world’s largest contiguous empire between 13^th and 14^th centuries, often called the ‘green invader’, killed so many, that huge swathes of inhabited and populated land became depopulated and became forests! What his life’s purpose was, remains a mystery. Whatever it was, it isn’t around!

They are not alone. Ruthless rulers, lying leaders, shrewd businessmen; none of them had any different fate. Each of them devised means to decimate opposition, overcome challenges and create suitable environment for exclusive growth and spent a lifetime attempting to create systems to carry their names till eternity. Addiction, it turns out to be, turns them blind to reality.

But we can see! The same story is being spun in vain even now, across the world in every country, society, business and even at home.

Empires, fiefdoms, institutions and people; they all obey this law. One may find few examples to dispute the hypothesis. The disagreement comes from our inability to see the graph ahead in time. Extension of the graph forward on axis of time eventually proves that the exception is merely a visibility issue.

No exceptions?

Exceptions Prove the Rule

There could be an argument that ideologies could beat this law. Therefore, if the purpose of life of an individual is to create and propagate an ideology, would it last long, if not forever?

Dispassionate dissection of the argument would easily dispel the fallacy. The loftiest of ideals, fervently celebrated, could also find itself being trampled upon, at times by the very same people who use it to usurp power. Contemporary National and international politics is witness enough to the weaknesses of the argument.  Communism has acquired capitalist colour driving equals and more equals further apart; religions have evolved finding better ways to sell salvation and assassin of the ‘Father of The Nation’ is repackaged as freedom fighter. Time can make zeros of heroes can and martyrs out of killers.  Nothing is forever; not even gratitude.

‘Purpose of life’ is fallacy that we have been conditioned to believe in; a collective narcissistic pursuit. Though just one element of a complex interwoven food chain, we fool ourselves us into believing that we are special and ordained to lord over others. Kept alive by the grace of flora and fauna within and feeding on flora and fauna outside and mortally susceptible to even the tiniest bacterium or virus, we are only as good as any other species and definitely bad for others. We exploit the earth at the cost of other species and continually endeavour to exploit even others in our own species. Our cruelty remains unmatched among all species. All that we say about finding purpose of life masks either our selfish or escapist motives.

Crass Pessimism?

Against all lofty teachings?

If not for a purpose, what must we live for?

The Truth

Truth is often unpalatable. Purpose of life, irrespective of the owner, has a shelf life.

The Great Wall of China stretching over 21,196 km, was built by a series of Emperors from different dynasties. Built for the ‘purpose’ of fortifying northern borders of ancient China, it has long outlived its original purpose. China continues to claim real estate far beyond the wall, now primarily a tourist destination!

Shorn of hypocrisy and narcissistic masks our purpose of life is existence. Penned plain and simple, there is nothing to achieve beyond ourselves in this life. Everything else, said about us, binds us in pursuit of a mirage. The primary task is to live and let live with dignity. If a purpose has to be defined, then it is just to be good to oneself and others around. Mutually inclusive thought and action would mitigate almost all problems that the world is facing today.

When humans start considering that other races within our species and other species in the inter-species realms have the same rights of existence, the world could be a better place for living. If inventions and discoveries were deployed only for the good of mankind and not used as exploitative means of socio-economic and political dominance, life could have been different for all of us. It still can be!

It is often said that there is enough and more to satiate everyone’s needs. It is the greed of some, that makes it difficult for others to meet even their basic needs. That remains the bare fact.  The pleasure one gets through cheating and untrustworthiness, little or big acts of smartness, would all be in vain.

Being good to oneself can happen even while being just and good to others. Look at life as an opportunity to be good to people.

Bare Fact

On 2^nd February while coming home from the local barbershop, our caretaker fell by the roadside. Passers-by carried him to the medical college nearby. He passed away on 10^th February.

When I went to pay condolences, I saw him peacefully asleep dressed in the purest of whites. I was one amongst the crowd at the funeral. I watched his mortal remains locked in the coffin being pushed into the burial vault. Along with him locked in his coffin, went the purpose of his life; if any he had. Everybody and everything he loved stayed back.

You and I too would soon be gone and with us all that we believe in. All that we built and plan to build will not.

Paradoxical, but true, each of us, leave ‘footprints on the sands of time’, each one momentary, however impactful and seemingly indelible.

Are you still thinking of a great purpose of life?

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[i] Vehement denial could be the first reaction