What’s life all about?
Life on earth has existed for millions of years now. Dinosaurs and other primitive creatures that once dominated our land have left behind their fossils today. Many of our ancestors lived and passed away leaving behind their learnings and their legacy. Among those who lived before us struggled with the question: What is the meaning of this life? Many philosophers have lived their life trying to answer this crucial question. Today many of us still ponder upon it: What is this life all about? And what is the meaning of it?
We know how it began and eventually how it ends but who can tell us about the in-betweens. Is it our Karma? Destiny? Can we shape it? Is it free will or has everything already been written? I struggle with this question too. And for the longest time I thought it was about Pursuit of Happiness. All our life we try to be happy, and we search and pursue that happiness in our jobs, work, relationships, opportunities and good health. We tell ourselves: “When I will land up on my ideal job, I will be happy,” and we work hard all our lives for it. Or we say, “when I will get married to my ideal partner, I will be happy” and work for it. We become happy after achieving our goals but what after that? Do we remain happy, or do we start pursuing more happiness and go after the next thing because often that is not all that we wanted?
One thing that I found common in all this chase of happiness is the Act of Pursuit. Focusing upon it, I realized that we all find happiness in pursuing something. Pursuing our job, our life partner, perfect health, a luxurious house, an excellent car. Happiness lies in the pursuit of things and once we achieve that, we are onto the next. I noticed when we live our life pursuing things; we are living in the present moment, appreciating life’s serendipitous gifts and making connections that last longer. Although, we focus on the end goal as that remains our motivation, but in that pursuit we are naturally focusing on our current actions and become happy that we will soon achieve our future goals. So, I guess, life is not about the pursuit of happiness; rather it is happiness of the pursuit.
It is said that life is not about destination, but the journey and this pursuit is what our life journey is all about. We know how our movie of life starts and ends so rather than pursuing happiness and not living in the present moment, why not be happy pursuing this journey of life.
Wait! Did I just resolve and answer the age-old question? You tell me 🙂