What Actually is the Meaning of Life?

 

The world is like a colossal labyrinth, full of ironies. It is a place where you lose when you lose, and you lose even when you win. Stay with me to comprehend the meaning of life.

One actually needs a really sharp mind to understand the enormity of the above statement. Once you see this through, then the question, “How do I win in this grandeur and magnanimous fight of life that everyone seems to be blindly fighting in day and night rather seriously and painstakingly?”, won’t pester you anymore.

Then the right and the more prudent question to ask will be, “Is there a way through which I can come out of this battle altogether, instead of fighting it in the first place?”

What I mean by it, is that life is a battle, where either winning or losing is not the eternal solution. We all are running in a race, only to have more of everything. More money, more name, more fame, more respect, more happiness, and so on. And somewhere in the pursuit of endlessly having more and more, death dawn upon us, and it’s game over.

Always keep this in mind, your present situation is someone’s dream to live. No matter how bad you think the present scenario is; if you are reading this, then probably you at least have a roof over your head with 3 square healthy meals a day to fill your paunch. This is still a fantasy for millions of people around the globe.

For those people, you already are a billionaire, but you think you are poor at your own level of mind, probably because you are comparing yourselves to others or just simply have some unrealistic expectations and futile desires to fulfill.

What is the Solution then?

Well, I am sure most of you are about to leave, thinking it is a boring thing to ponder upon, and you are probably right. Most of us are only interested to know how to get what we want as soon as possible, in the easiest conceivable way, without really putting in any extra energy or time.

We are not used to directing our boxed thinking into a topic like understanding the ‘meaning of life’. Everyone is living in this enormous illusion that if what they want the most, miraculously comes into existence, then their lives will become awesome.

What they don’t foresee is that the mere solution to one thing becomes the very base of the next big problem in their lives. And what happens next? Another “desire” to overcome the obstacle. And like this, the cycle keeps on continuing 24*7*365.

Earlier you were being sad because you were single, now you are sad because you are in a relationship. Earlier you told yourself you’d be happy once you become a junior partner, now you are telling yourself you’d be happy once you become a senior partner. Earlier you said $100,000 was enough, now you won’t settle for less than $10,000,000.

To sum our lives in one line: We were delusional before, we are delusional right now, and we will die delusional. Period. Might sound bitter but is actually the reality for so many of us.

I will try to explain this to you in the simplest way possible.

 

The Universe is Like a Giant Ocean

Like I said before, this is a race, where you actually lose, irrespective of whether you think you won or lost.

I have given this example before. Try imaging the universe as an ocean. A vast one. There are billions and billions of waves in this ocean. Trillions and trillions of water droplets. If you compare your body, which you consider as your own self, with that of a wave, then isn’t every wave just living for itself?

The wave can say that “I am also living for those tiny little waves emerging from ME”, but it is only saying so because again, “ME” is involved. The wave may care about other waves, only if they are associated with it in some way or another in the first place. So ultimately it is living only for itself and the same is with all of us too.

We can say we live for our children or our parents or our families and friends, but you are doing that only because they are yours. Everybody is living for themselves at the end of the day. You care about your friends and relationships because again, they are “YOURS”. 

Now in a normal ocean, waves don’t fight off each other. But this universe is like an ocean where every wave is busy contesting with each other. Every wave is busy making itself bigger and bigger, in order to engulf the smaller ones and emerge “Victorious”.

Is the world gonna change the way it is running? Probably not. I mean, ask yourself, if it comes to a choice to save your family, and a bunch of 200 people. Who would you choose?

This is not a movie going on, where you can save both of them. So, the point being, the very nature of this world is that everyone is thinking about themselves, making themselves more and more powerful by suppressing others, directly or indirectly.

 

The Unarticulated Battle we are All a Part of

How can anyone be truly joyful in such a cut-throat environment? People can just show from the outside their smiling faces, but from the inside, they are crying. And the more interesting part about this battle is that no one is carrying any kind of firearms here, which is what makes it even more dangerous than the real battles fought at the borders.

Everyone is carrying flowers here and is trying to show how caring and loving they are. This is what makes it one hell of a treacherous war because you can’t say for sure who is your real enemy here. Your enemies may have set their camps right under your nose, and you wouldn’t know about it until it is too late.

Like the joker said,” Their morals, their codes…, it is a bad joke. Dropped at the first sign of trouble. They are only as good as the world allows them to be. When the chips are down, these civilized people, they will eat each other.” How true is that. 

Can these things stop happening all of a sudden? Impossible.

SO, you gotta make yourselves robust enough to live in this world, no question about it. Robust in the sense that you must have an understanding of this ocean, the meaning of life.

 

Stop Squandering Time in Life

Our majority of time is spent in plain, simple time pass, instead of making ourselves a great warrior. Timepass, here, is anything that is deteriorating your energy in any form. If you are not learning from whatever is happening to you at the present moment, then that will all come under the radar of ‘time pass’. All the soul-sucking pleasures you are indulged in.

‘A person after committing every sin in the rule book looks to God for atonement.’  This is also what most of us do as they expect to get away with it. Now you gotta decide whether you wanna spend your time being a fierce warrior, or to get spoilt by the pleasures you keep running after?

 

Escaping is not the Solution

We all look for escapes. We all are experts at running away from our problems. But you can’t escape them forever, because no matter where you go, you can’t really escape this ocean.

Since escaping is not the answer you were looking for, ideally, you should be investing your time in making yourself a brave warrior. You gotta make yourself so powerful that you wouldn’t have to beg anyone to get anything.

You gotta make yourselves skilled enough to be deserving to get what you want and be intellectual enough so that you can smash through whatever obstacles come in your path. But hold on, didn’t I say at the starting that this is a war where you lose even if you win? So, the bigger predicament here is, whether being a warrior is the solution or not?

Let’s say you become the best warrior ever born on the face of the earth. Does this mean that you are absolved of all the problems?

You can get sick anytime, the people close to you can die anytime, even you will die at some point or any one of the hundred and twelve other disastrous turns your life can take at any given moment. If you look closely, there are pros and cons to being a warrior and sometimes even not being a warrior.

Who is the safest person in a war?

People who aren’t warriors. Because they can sit at the fences while the real warriors are busy protecting and fighting for them. They are probably gonna be the last ones to face the music. One doesn’t escape the sorrow. It lies on both sides. Then the question should be how to be free from this sorrow?

 

Broaden Your Understanding

Only if one puts in all the time (after acquiring the basic needs) understanding whether he is a wave or the water in this vast ocean. That’s the true meaning of life.

If you are a wave, then a wave can never live a happy life. It might show it from the outside, it may brag about its size and power, but from the inside, it will never be blissful.

But hey hey hey, what if you are the water? If you are water, then there is no way to make you sad. Because a wave can form and die, but the water? NO. The water never dies. And what actually is the truth now? Wave or water? If one removes water from the wave, then where is the wave? In reality, there is no wave. Water is all there is.

 

The Fun Part

Even after seeing this truth, you will still continue to fight in the outside world, because like I said, you lose if you fight, and you definitely lose if you don’t. But now the key transformation will be that, after seeing this truth, the water will now act through an instrument called the ‘wave’, playing with the other waves in the ocean and expressing itself to its fullest which will make all the difference in the world.

Now you will have the upper hand because you are playing with those who don’t even know a single thing about the water, who believe that there is no water, just waves. You will always have an edge over those who haven’t yet understood the meaning of life. Life will become a game for you where you will play not because you have any kind of greed to win or any fear to lose, but because it is in your very basic nature. 

You will rise above winnings or losings because you already know that you are the water, which is INFINITE. It doesn’t matter whether you will win in this game or not, because now you know your true self. And because you know your true self, you will play like nobody has ever before and it will be something worth watching.

What do you have to do now, to see this truth? Do you have to stop fighting outside? Well of course not. If you are fighting on the outside all your time, then you sure as hell can take out 1 hour of your time every day on this inquiry “WHO AM I”?

One who knows who he is; will eventually know everything there is to know.

 

The Takeaway

I don’t know whether there is a huge grandiose plan set for us in the stars, or whether we are mere puppets whose strings have already been preprogrammed by some supernatural power, on the basis of which we act our entire lives. The point is that life has been given to us.

Out of trillions and trillions of galaxies out there, we have already been bestowed with this stupendous gift called ‘Life’. How does it matter whether we were destined to do something great or not, how does it matter whether we have any superior goals or purposes, how does it matter if we don’t know the point of our lives?

We have already got so freaking much that it doesn’t make any sense to me that instead of enjoying each and every second of this precious gift, instead of being immensely grateful for everything the Universe has done for us, instead of making this the greatest life anybody has ever lived, we are squandering time asking vague questions and even becoming morose on not being able to find our supposed ‘ultimate purpose’.

Guys, for one, we are alive! And the cherry on top, we are goddamn Homosapiens. Do we really need anything else? Why not put that great intelligence of ours to some meaningful work, create some amazing shit, and simply live according to our basic nature.

Other animals do have a certain limit of what they can achieve, but humans have been perhaps the only species yet, so advanced and forward that it keeps on surprising themselves time and time again with what they can achieve.

There literally is no end to what we can accomplish and to what extent we can push our boundaries. Why not keep up with that spirit and surge ahead, playing our best games we can? And if you are still looking for a purpose to live by or some ulterior and sophisticated meaning of life? I got one for you.

Do something nobody has done before. Push the boundaries so high that no one even dares to dream about beating them. Make something of yourself that the onlookers become flabbergasted and totally dumbstruck in awe of you. Do anything that makes you say to yourself, “I DID IT!”

Because at the end of the day, the true meaning of life is the meaning you tell yourself.

 

 

 

 

“You are not a drop in the ocean,

You are the entire ocean in a drop.”

-RUMI