Dear Friend,
You have recently asked me to write about the purpose of life. Now that’s not an easy task. To actually say anything about life, you should experience its various emotions which keep changing with age and time. Different people have expressed several opinions at various points of time. 5000 years ago, Bhagawad Gita has said that the purpose of man’s life is to attain liberation. That is what I could have written in a different way. But, I want to tell it my own way.
A man’s life can be defined as a series of events and actions. Each of these events and actions can be divided further into sub-events and actions, which can classified as everyday events. These everyday events are associated with certain emotions, which are positive or negative. The more are the positive emotions the better will be the life. Whether the event ends up in positive or negative emotion depends on the actions you have undertaken. The actions means, the honesty of your thought, the commitment in the effort and detachment towards the result. These three parameters can be summarized in one word, Quality. It is this quality with which you perform an action, is going to decide the positive-ness in your life. And to bring in more positive moments with quality actions, is the purpose of life.
A game, which you have lost in college, may have hurt you at that point, but may have no significance or emotional distress after 10 years. A bad grade in a particular course would have disappointed you at that time. But 10 years later, it’s somewhere buried deep down the brain and never comes up. Be it a game or grade, is an event, which has happened because of your actions. And the event would be a success or failure because of the action you have performed. I don’t mean to associate success with positive emotion and failure with negative emotion. Whether the event is a success or failure, it should always leave you with a positive emotion and that is possible if the action is performed with quality. The actual results of the events would not be significant after 10 years. But the quality of the effort which is put in those small everyday events is going to bring in positive attitude, which ultimately will bestow you with “peace”.
At this point, with the limited experiences I have, if I have to use a single phase to tell what the purpose of life, and then it should be “Quality of actions”. Whether you have liked, what I have written, would actually depend on how successfully I have retold what Krishna has already said. If not, I promise to come up with a better version at a latter point of time, that is, when I have better understanding of life itself.
Bye.
Ps: The answer for everything about life is found in Gita. If anyone has answered any question about life or its purpose, it is only from Gita in a different format. So is my try, as well.
