Whose purpose is it anyway?

Sailen Routray 

(This essay reflects on the idea of purpose—whether it is shaped by the self, by society, or by circumstance. It explores how individuals navigate meaning and intention in everyday life.)

 A Japanese teapot made out of iron, viewed from above
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons/Agon S. Buchholz

From where I am sitting and writing right now I can see a wide expanse of fields extending till the horizon. The line where the earth and sky meet is hidden by the bodies of trees. In the middle distance I can see a large tree, perhaps a mahua, spread over a few hundred square feet. There are two smaller trees near this tree. The leaves of all the three are a shade of light green tinged with yellow.

The largest of the three trees has a thin foliage, but the ground underneath is always shaded. Right now it is eleven in the forenoon of a hot Baisakha day. I can see a bull standing absolutely still underneath. When I visited the tree last, on some other summer day, I saw a couple of dogs sprawled on the ground, near its trunk, panting as they are wont to do.

Is this tree’s purpose to provide shade to stray animals and people? Not really. It does provide shade and many other things besides, all of which are beneficial to some creature or the other. But is that the tree’s purpose? Perhaps the only purpose we can attribute to this tree is to live, which it does no matter what. It is perhaps safe to say that the tree does not have a purpose.

Do I have a purpose? I have spent a lot of time in my life with soul searching, explorations, and intense seeking to figure out my purpose. I have met and experienced some interesting people, ideas, books, places, heartburn, and happiness in the process. But have I found my purpose? No.

What if the differences I posit between the tree and me, with respect to this idea of having a purpose, are not tenable at all? What if I am like the tree. What if I do not have a purpose?

Then I am just free to do whatever I want to do from moment to moment, like the tree. But am I able to exercise that freedom? Alas, no! There is social conditioning that forces me to think that I must have a purpose. And then I become guilty about seeking purpose as a matter of habit, despite intellectually understanding that I do not need to have any purpose to earn the right to exist.

This has the possibility of turning into an infinite loop. There seems to be only one way out of it. It is this—to cognize that the purpose of human life is to realize that we don’t have any purpose and to strive to make that realization not a matter of intellectual understanding but of everyday living. Paradoxical? Welcome to real life!

Note: You may want to explore a poem that plays with the idea of meaning titled 'Some things I Have Been Meaning to Tell You Or The Bhubaneswar Love Song' and a reflective piece titled 'Manual for Making a Chariot' that shows how the magical is often embedded within ordinary memories. 

Tags: meaning of life essay, purpose in life reflection, philosophy of purpose, personal reflection essay, life and meaning writing

Keywords: purpose, life meaning, self and society, essay reflection on life