On purpose, Part 1: The lack of it

BY BORDI JAEN

THE YEAR 2021 is special for those, such as myself, who are graduating or have graduated from high school as Batch 2021. It is the time for us to be thrusted into pre-adulthood, that is to say, university life. Although we never wished for university to have started out so anticlimactically, the pandemic is just one of Lady Fortune’s many blows that we have to endure.

I’m happy to see so many of my friends and acquaintances begin their footing in the world. There are many individuals out there with dreamy eyes and youthful vigor that want to carry the world like Atlas and seize their momentum before the mortar of their zeal has a chance to congeal (Mr. Banks reference). However, a problem that many of us ponder (and should be pondering, really) is exactly what do we want out of life? What do we really want out of our mortal existence? What should be driving us forward?

Despite what others may say, this is a question that should permeate our minds more often. Especially to us, Batch 2021, or even younger than that. Not knowing our purpose in life is a lot like hiking without actually planning out a route, it can either lead to a rollercoaster extravaganza, though more often than not, we find ourself reeling in the unknown and wishing for a sense of direction in life. The consequence becomes apparent when, in the flurry of our activities of reading, writing, socializing, intriguing, working, and all these admirable social habits, we take a pause and ask ourselves just what exactly are we doing all this for?

The thing with our sense of purpose, our sense of meaning, is that its realization must not come from outside or foreign influences but must be realized within us. This does not mean that we cannot draw inspiration from the outside, such as our parents or loved ones, but that in the end, how satisfied we are of what we become lies not in others but in us.

Let us not make the mistake of letting others choose our purpose without it really being registered in our mind and soul then for us to horrifyingly realize in the end that we don’t like it, that it isn’t fulfilling.

I am reminded of an article I read months back that delves into the software engineer surplus in India. Individuals who were pressured into taking a degree and then suddenly not knowing what to do in an oversaturated and overhyped profession; told to “first be an engineer, then figure out what you want to do in life”. In the end, they end up in fields unrelated to what they studied for or those that do go into the field, with the exception of the best and brightest, end up with long hours with indirectly correlated salaries. It’s painfully comic. The lack or vagueness of purpose manifests in what we call “mid-life crisis”. Heck, there is even such thing as a “quarter-life crisis”.

Even talented and well-off individuals are not immune to the consequence of having a vague purpose! This is manifested in the Tolstoy novella that I recently finished reading, “The Death of Ivan Ilych” (Apologies for the spoilers).

Ivan Ilyich had a promising beginning, akin to what many of my acquaintances and I do, and yet, he trudges through life with self-interest and the desire to please others. He directs his talents and intellect to this hollow meaning. It is only through his unexpected and fatal illness that he realizes the emptiness of it all where the only remaining fulfilling thing there is for him to do is to die.

I hope that it will not take a long and painful illness for us to figure out a worthwhile purpose of living. We often make the mistake of Ivan Ilyich, we are content to having to wait out figuring our purpose in life while we do this and that first.

We often do not realize that we do not always have the benefit of a long life because Death can snatch us at an unexpected time. We see accidents and illnesses as something that affects other people but not us. We think that we are fortune tellers to exact our own lifespans.

Why should we wait it out? Why we should be delaying it? Death, as is Life, is creative in the many ways that it may come. Death can come in a glass of milk and water, as with Mabini and Tchaikovsky.

It might come in the form of a bullet or a prolonged illness, as with the elder and the younger Aquino. Must we be content with delaying the thing that should, in actuality, be the first on our list: figuring out the purpose of our existence?

We must thank the Almighty that we still have time on Earth to think of our greater purpose, our greater calling. While, if our life is a day, we appreciate that we are at the approaching zenith, the noon.

However, we must remember that a lack of purpose is a cumbersome burden that rears its ugly shadow over to dim our day in ever increasing aging and figure as the sundial moves with a racing Helios.

We, who are still young, must remember that there are no shadows cast at noon. Shall we have our horrifying realization, like Ivan Ilyich, in the afternoon of our lives when the sundial never moves back and only forward, to an unstoppable march to our twilight? To the end of our life, our day?

I leave you with an excerpt from one of my favourite poems, “A Psalm of Life” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

Tell me not, in mournful numbers, // Life is but an empty dream! // For the soul is dead that slumbers, // And things are not what they seem. //

Life is real! Life is earnest! // And the grave is not its goal; // Dust thou art, to dust returnest, // Was not spoken of the soul./PN