What is your purpose in life?

What do you want to do with your life? What do you want to accomplish before you ride off to the sunset? On my previous blog, I slightly grazed off this topic and it has been bothering me ever since. I think most of you reading this have already finished school and college. Some might even have started a family of their own. But no matter how far you go in your life, there is always this feeling where you say to yourselves “Have I done enough? Am I doing what I am supposed to do? Do I even know what I am supposed to do?” and so on. Whatever you are about to read is just my opinion. Please take it with a grain of salt.

Up until your college, you are always told what to do, what not to do and see what others are doing and follow them. You never really had to think about what to do because there was always something to do - Projects, assignments, presentations, mid-terms, finals, etc. You were struggling so hard through those years finishing up all those tasks that you have been given just to make a path for your life on your own terms. After all that, you are faced with an infinite number of paths ahead of you for you to pick. And that’s where it all begins.

We, humans, were for a long time accustomed to living and surviving in a tight-knit community where you never really know or need to know or understand what was going outside your bubble. But now, thanks to the internet, you have access to pretty much any information that you will ever need in your entire life in your pocket. Sometimes you are fed with that information by nudging you “Hey! Guess what? This random person from your kindergarten you follow on Instagram is doing good and just bought themself a house! Awesome!” You see so many people telling you to do what you like, follow your dreams, build your side hustle, start a business, start a podcast, follow your heart and what not. So much so, that you really feel bad about your own existence.

Let’s say you have discovered something you like doing and you enjoy doing it most of the time. And now you have become good enough at it that people will actually pay you to do it, continue doing that thing. You are definitely the rare and lucky ones. If you haven’t found yourself with that caliber of skill or talent, welcome to being most people. To you I offer this: As I touched upon earlier, we evolved for a world so unlike the one we find ourselves in. It is amazing that any of us can function at all.

It may seem like a normal human construction that if you fail to do so, you are a loser. But you as a human are not created for diplomas, job interviews, careers, businesses, economics etc. Your school and college days are spent in learning math, science, art and so on with honing social skills, cracking interviews, entrepreneurship, finding your dream job are off to the side lines as optional activities. As far as we know, modern humans evolved and came into existence 300,000 years ago. All these modern societal constructions came to life around 300 years ago with the industrial revolution. So, I think it is fair to say it is all brand new compared to what we are evolved for.

The one thing you can aim for is to feel valuable with whatever you are doing matters something to you. You don’t need a job that changes the world that is creatively fulfilling, that you love doing non-stop, that uses any degree much less the degree you happen to have to make you feel valuable. But all of the different constraints, that define what a valuable life is, are already nuts. It is way too much to expect from anyone much less everyone.

So, if you are wondering what to do with your life? I don’t have an answer. Nobody does. Everyone is just figuring it out on their own. But let me tell you one thing, you might not know what you're doing with your life, but keep in mind that no one changes the world all by themselves and no one doesn’t change it at all. Because the one thing you are making every day, no matter what you do, is yourself and you must do it well. And as always, thanks for reading.