The quest for the ultimate purpose is killing me!

You have been thinking, over thinking about the purpose of your life since the time you could make out what the words ‘purpose of life’ mean. It is a fancy term and you love the idea that we’re all here to add some value to the world around us; that your existence, your presence has a larger purpose to solve. You believe or have been believing, for a very long time that each one of us has a unique gift to offer to this world. When you realize what gift you bring along with you, you can start adding more beauty, more value to that gift each day so that when you’re gone, your gifts have reached their utmost potential.

It becomes overwhelming and even frustrating sometimes to keep seeking for that one place where you belong. You feel empty inside and think that maybe you will stumble upon some place where it will suddenly start to make sense, when your existence will suddenly become life. You keep looking for that place which will probably have all the answers. You try with all your might and put together your skill-set, interest and pragmatism and look for the most probable places where you might seek solace. However, after a while you realize that the shoes just don’t fit right. They are either a little too big, a little too small or bite a little too much but you’re looking everywhere for that perfect pair.

You have read so many articles on how to be more productive and turn your twenty-four hours into forty-eight hours, how to be successful and achieve your dreams. Suddenly, it strikes you that you don’t know what your dream is and you have been existing here for twenty-three years not knowing where you have to go. You’re stuck at the platform, the trains are passing by and people are catching their trains. They are bidding goodbyes. Some are happy, some have moist eyes, but they know their destination. You, on the other hand are standing at the platform, not knowing which train to take; not knowing where to go. Before you can make a choice, you’re pushed onto a train because it’s a crowded platform, people have to keep moving on and the world cannot give you forever to make your choices.

Then, you get down at another station and it feels home for a while and you feel maybe destiny got you to the right place. After sometime, you realize that the language is foreign and the people don’t seem friendly anymore. You want to spend more time here to understand the language better. You want to spend time getting closer to the people but you’re torn between spending more time at this place or exploring another place, which you might identify more closely with.

This goes on for a long time and you’re left thinking if you’re a misfit completely. You wonder whether you will fit in anywhere at all. You wonder if you will ever be good enough for anything. This seeps into your soul and gives you shudders sometimes. You have list of things to accomplish each day. You have a list of tasks to track your growth. When you check on them, there is a green checklist but you still feel stagnant and wonder if you performed the right tasks at all.  

Every day, you go on with your life telling yourself that probably this is how it is supposed to be, this is how it is for everyone. You tell yourself that this is real life and that it’s only in a Utopian world where people love what they do and do what they love and are content with their lives. You make peace with it and seek refuge for a while in a book or in that dance during which you almost break a leg at the pub. You seek happiness in pieces and tell yourself that eventually you will be able to put them together and it will make sense, complete sense then.

You’re too drained after wandering for way too long, too drained looking for that purpose everywhere, searching every nook and corner of the world for it. Exhausted, dejected and failed; you return home and you cannot believe what you see there. There, amidst everything that you had and everything that you brought along with you when you left, lay your purpose. No, it was not always there. All along when you thought you were wandering aimlessly; you were creating it. Ironically, just when you thought everything was over, your purpose was born.