- Food for thought
“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why”- Mark Twain
I often thought that it took something really inspirational to start creating art of any sort. As time passed, I realized that life was profoundly the biggest inspiration to do anything. So I questioned myself, why not pen down my ambiguous thoughts that I experience on a daily to create something that could ambitiously impact the heart of another wandering soul?
Life teaches you many things, allows you to learn, how to fight and eventually discover the biggest secrets of our subconscious mind. What we observe, live, experience or think on a day to day basis has a great impact on shaping our mind-set. The external world around us is far more fragile than we think, it is transformable and always changing. But what remains is what we have chosen to retrieve, the lessons learnt and the fruitful or distasteful experiences.
Life is an eye-opening journey that ultimately treats you the same way you treat it. You come across many positive people who inspire you and make you love the world and its people. You also come across people who make you feel like the road ahead will just get rougher, with various unforeseen challenges, out of which happiness must be the ultimate goal. This ultimately challenges us to create circumstances that make us ‘happy’ and cultivate ways on building a positive demeanor. In the pursuit of finding positivity, we begin to falsely believe that a positive individual is found behind a concealing smile. But isn’t happiness more than the fine lines that crease to your poignant eyes?
The positivity we should seek is one where we search for hope even when evidently there isn’t any, one where we devote our hearts to someone knowing it won’t be reciprocated, and one where we’ve forgotten how to live but still choose to fight the monsters that our subconscious hosts. As people progress into the different phases of this roller-coaster we call life, your personality begins to change. The day you open your eyes into this world, you are in your most pure form; a state that can never be achieved after that very moment. It is the only time a person is completely self-less, holds no grudges, accepts everyone’s love and has no expectations from life or the future. As life moves forward, our parents/guardians make a massive impact on our thoughts, opinions and preferences. The importance of this phase is never understood until maturity strikes; that is when you really begin to question the ‘why’ factors of your character and all those concurring troubling thoughts that you simply brushed away.
Life is so temporary yet permanent, you know it will come to its demise one day or another but there is no way to know until you live it. And then there’s attempting to find our ‘purpose’; A head-scratcher that eventually translates into a whole new venture for the coming stages in our lives.
In an ideal world, the concept of purpose would be taught early on and would be the sole reason for bringing another life into this beautifully cruel world. If every child was conceived to fulfill a purpose, for themselves and only themselves, depression would never be the common cold of mental illness. If you think about it, all feelings of distress in our childhood usually brew from expectations, trauma and unfulfilled dreams caused by external sources. And if we only had to be concerned about fulfilling our dreams, wouldn’t we only look at our own reflection for validation?
The depth of an individual purpose is so profound that from the time that you ponder on it to the time you actually understand it, you’ve been hit with yet another transition in your life. As you trot ahead in life, many people help you discover little pieces to your unique purpose. Undoubtedly, your parents shape your personality, a lot of your goals may even be shared with them and some may be formed through rebellion against them. They could be your biggest inspiration or even your biggest nightmare. You might have even thought what they choose for you was the best or couldn’t wait to get them off your back. But then independence knocks on your door and destroys this innocence and long-lived safety net.
Purpose is far more meaningful than just survival in society, all these tangible achievements will help you survive the standard expectations of all those who don’t actually matter, often termed as ‘society’. But are you standard or unique?
Are you more than the name you carry? The genitals you have? Or even the demographic you represent? You may gain some privilege through these factors but purpose in this context is essentially an achievement that you know only you were meant to attain, no matter what it is, how simple or complex, something that may not impact anyone but yourself; and maybe, just maybe, a change that will help you live life more positively. The unfortunate misconception about purpose is that it needs to be measurable or even tangible, that it must be something more impactful than just spawning happiness or filling your soul with ecstasy.
Alas, the only certainty we actually have is that we come into this world as a lone wolf and leave just as one too. Perhaps this is why your life’s purpose must be about you more than anyone else.
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