After spending half of my life trying understand the purpose of life, I have realized that the purpose of life is to be free. Achieve true freedom.
Once upon a time in ancient India, there was a wise sage.
One day, he got divine inspiration to write an epic. He sat on his desk and
started writing. He wrote for years only stopping for food, sleep and washroom
breaks. At last, he finished his epic scripture. He sighed with satisfaction. After years, for the first
time, he looked up from his desk and noticed the world around him. His hut was
neat and clean. There was a lamp burning at his desk. There was a platter of
food on the dining table. Suddenly it dawned on him and a question aroused in
his mind - who has been cooking and cleaning for me all these years? Who made
my bed? Who lit the lamp at my desk every evening? When he was contemplating on
this great mystery, a woman walks into the hut. The sage tries to recognize her
- who are you? - He asks.
The woman smiles. She calmly replies - "I am your
wife." The sage is surprised. He remembers he is married. "Are you
the one who has been taking care of my needs while I was lost in writing my
scripture?" The wife responds - "Indeed, I am." This revelation
takes the sage by surprise. He is dumbfounded at this level of dedication from
his wife towards him and his passion/mission without any expectation. He
realizes that without his wife, he wouldn't have been able to write this
scripture. He decides to name his scripture after his wife.
Ironically, I don't remember the name of the sage, but I remember the name of his wife - Bhamati. He named his scripture Bhamati.
Why am I telling you this story?
I am an extremely spiritual and creative person. The more I
try to fill my life with spirituality and creativity, the more I realize that
until I am trapped by worldly attachments, it is impossible for me to even
aspire these two things.
To become spiritual and creative, one requires denouncing all worldly attachements. Every great spiritual and creative human being in history, ruthlessly and shamelessly denounced all worldly attachments in order to pursue spirituality and creativity. A modern human being carries on her back a great mountain of worldly attachments. It is impossible to carry this burden all by yourself so we depend on fellow human beings who are rarely trustworthy and dependable.
Do I sound cynical? Let's elaborate.
1. Making a living:
I, like all my peers, spend the largest chunk of my day, my
life, making ends meet. Working class people's lives revolve around their job.
My time, my mind-space, my body are spent generously on only this one aspect of
life - my job. My whole life depends on this job. Without it, I can't even
imagine how I would survive in this world. The greatest flaw in human
civilization is the amount of struggle humans have to endure just to provide
basic necessities to themselves and their families.
2. Wealth Management:
As if earning money was not enough, one must also learn
to manage their money. It's not like good ol' times, when saving a penny meant
earning a penny. Today, saving money in your bank account is the dumbest thing
you can do with your money. You must invest your money wisely. Where does one
get that wisdom to manage their wealth? You can either spend hundreds of hours
of your time to learn money management which you can't do because of your
full-time job, or you can outsource your wealth management to professionals.
When you outsource it, you inevitably become dependent on this broker to
determine your future financial security. And what if this broker
takes advantage of your dependency and cheats you out of your money? Just the
thought sends a shiver down my spine.
3. House Management:
Homemaking is the toughest and the most thankless job in the
world. There are a million errands you have to run every day to manage a
household. It is a mind-numbing job but someone's got to do it. If I start to
list the household chores one has to perform on a daily basis, I won't have any
space left to talk about anything else. I have outsourced many of these tasks
to a domestic help. I am heavily dependent on my house-help. Without her, I
can't survive. Even after that, I have to depend on electricians, plumbers,
carpenters, gig workers, Uber drivers and security guards to manage my house. And are they dependable? Well, rarely. Freedom is truly elusive.
4. Family Management:
Everything we do is for our family. Each family has their
own struggles and one must manage it. Raising kids, taking care of ageing
parents, supporting family financially and otherwise, resolve family disputes -
these can be highly taxing tasks. You can't even outsource most of these tasks. You must do them yourself. I come from a family where we value self-sufficiency. So, this is not a
daunting task for me, but I have seen families where one person carries most of
the burden in the family and others live off of this person like a parasite. I
feel terrible for such a person.
5. Skills Management:
In today's competitive world, most of us have to keep
upgrading ourselves to keep up with the competition. New technological advances
render our skills obsolete every few years. We have to keep learning new skills
to survive in this cutthroat world. God, give all of us strength, after taking
care of our household chores, our kids, our job, to learn a new skill.
6. Health Management:
None of the above matters, if your health is poor. You can
earn money, invest it wisely, take care of your family, upskill yourself, only
if you are healthy. But today, who has to the time to take care of their
health? First of all, who knows how to manage their health? Going on the
internet to take advice about health is like going down a rabbit hole. Again,
you can spend hundreds of hours researching on the internet about how to be
healthy, and how to treat yourself when you are sick. Or you can go to a
qualified doctor. Again, you become dependent on this person for your most
valuable asset. Your health. However, more often than not, these doctors turn
out to be greedy and not trustworthy. I curse such people from the bottom of my
heart.
At any given point, every adult is juggling these six balls.
At any given point, I find myself doing crisis management in one or more of
these areas because people are not dependable and trustworthy. I ask the higher being, where is my Bhamati? Can I have one human being I can trust and depend on fully? I am a
one-woman-army. The amount of work I get done in all these six areas on a daily
basis is phenomenal. There are days when I am spread too thin. By the time I
fix one thing, five other things go wrong. Although, this type of days are few
and far apart, thanks to my proactive and cautious approach. I live my life with extreme
caution and planning. I make decisions with utmost precision and yet, occasionally,
I find myself in crisis mostly due to other people's failure to be dependable. I keep thinking about the people who live their life
recklessly or lazily, I can only imagine how screwed up their lives must
be.
The point is, despite such caution and planning, there never
comes a point in my day when I can say, all six businesses of my life are on
track, now I have the freedom to focus on spirituality and creativity.
Other than this, I have a desire to do my bit in making the world a better place. Perform small acts of kindness, stand up against injustice, be the voice for the voiceless, protect mother Earth, help someone in need. When do I find the time to do these things? You tell me.
There is a great deal of spirituality and creativity in the deep recesses of my mind. If nurtured properly, it can bloom exponentially. If I had someone like Bhamati in my life, I have no doubt that I would have achieved the greatness parallel to the Shakespeares and the Beethovans of the world. Although, I am morally against the idea of enslaving another human being to this extent and kidnap their life to serve my purpose. I am at the deadend. Nowhere else to go from here.
The only thing I wait for now is a break from these six
attachments. Weekends, festivals, trips, gigs, family functions, parties -
these things give me a temporary escape from these demanding businesses of my
life. I live from weekend to weekend. Festival to Festival. I feel helplessly
trapped in this modern lifestyle and civilization. Freedom from these worldly
businesses seems impossible. No wonder, Siddhartha left his palace, wife
and kid. How else can one achieve true freedom?
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