Perhaps, as a child, I've asked this question more often. I bet you, too, have asked this question more frequently as a child than as an adult. What's the point of life? Why do we exist? People who spend more than a minute's worth of time thinking about it have no place in mainstream life.
That's because mainstream life is too busy and too apparent to be riddled with something as obscure and dark as the purpose of life. When we are young, we wonder about it because we believe there's an answer. When we grow up, we realize that the answer is beyond our reach.
Strangely, the realization that we do not know the purpose of our life does not make us give up on life. Ironically, we value life more and get engrossed in living it. It's almost as if having no purpose equates to a de-facto purpose: to live.
I was watching a TV show where a Pakistani celebrity was being interviewed. In a thoughtful moment, the lady host asked our celebrity, "What is life?" The young actress responded with a strange innocence and poise, "Life is gratefulness."
She said this because she had seen tough times in her life as a child, and she had overcome those hardships and made a name for herself. She said she should now live her life in a way that shows gratitude.
Life is Gratefulness. For a moment, I was taken by surprise. It was an incredibly simple thing to say, wasn't it? But the more I thought about it, the more I realized how deep and concise this statement is. I wonder if she was aware of the depth of her words. Many others have said similar things, but that was a moment of fascination for me; something inside me clicked.
How many times have I heard that life is a gift? Perhaps too many times. Why didn't the click happen before? I don't know. Sometimes, the same thing said in different words alters the effect completely.
As a Muslim, I've been taught since childhood that the purpose of our life is to obey Allah, to submit to His Will, and to be steadfast in worshiping Him. Did I find these purposes satisfactory? Hardly. I kept searching because I thought worshiping Allah is a part of religion; it cannot be the very purpose of our creation. Why would Allah create humans just so they could bow to Him all their lives? If I were a god, would I create some beings only so they'd bow to me and praise me?
But then, like I said, sometimes saying the same thing differently can change its effect dramatically. If the choice of words could revolutionize the way one thinks, I was about to experience one such remarkable turn of phrase.
I was watching a lecture by Alireza Panahian. It was a short clip on the topic of life's purpose. In it, he says:
"We haven't been created to be good. Or to be perfect or to be successful. Don't give us the wrong address. We have been created to have a relationship with God."
I was sitting on my couch, dumbfounded.
It was a unique way of defining the concept of worship. A choice of words had transformed the meaning of obedience.
Obedience used to sound like a harsh, one-way, dutiful task. On the other hand, a relationship, even though it requires the same duties to be performed, sounded soft and elegant.
It's like the comparison between babysitting and mothering. One is a duty performed with emotional attachment, the other without.
Who God is and how the universe came into being may be a mystery, but we exist, and we owe this existence to someone, is something we know with certainty. That is, if you take religion out of the picture and assume that we have no prior knowledge about our purpose, we still know this truth: We exist, and we owe our existence to someone other than ourselves.
We have so much inside us and around us. Life is beautiful. It has so many facets. So, if there is one purpose that is self-explanatory, it is being grateful.
Be grateful for getting to experience life. That's the first thing. But as we delve deep into this state of thankfulness, our intelligence demands that we learn who to be thankful to. We know someone's responsible, someone is on the receiving end of this gratitude. This is where gratitude leads to your greater purpose: Living your life in pursuit of the one who gave you all this.
We have hearts and brains. Our brains show us the undeniable truths of life while our hearts oblige us to pay thanks and seek the Bestower. But all of this happens as we are occupied by the hustle and bustle of mainstream life. We often fail to reflect. We often fail to do the obvious as a result.
To get us to ponder about the purpose of life, notice that we're bombarded with many reminders on our way. Calamities, deaths, and the treacherous nature of life are but occasional reminders sent to us throughout our busy lives so that we pause and reflect. Life is transitory. Death is certain. What can we do other than try to connect ourselves to that greater reality?
There can be no other purpose of life more sensible and obvious than connecting with the one who made life. That entails searching, calling, thinking, reflecting, realizing, accepting, and surrendering.
"Our relationship with God is the relationship between a servant and His Master, which is formed with commands and obeying. It is not formed in any other way."
This makes me ask the question I asked earlier: If I were a god, would I create some beings just so they would bow to me, praise me, and serve me? Perhaps the answer lies in rephrasing the question.
If I was a god, would I create beings who could find a way to recognize me, express their thanks to me, and form a relationship with me? I will. In fact, the very possibility of the creation of such beings follows that a god should create such beings.
I know that learning is a lifelong process, and I may come across information that will increase my knowledge on the topic of life's purpose. But what I know today is a prized possession; it's made up of my eureka moments. I also know that this knowledge will not be satisfactory for many others who are currently searching for their purpose. Every person has their own eureka moments.
Every person who searches sincerely arrives at their own personalized, extremely satisfying answer sooner or later in life. And that's because life is alive too; it knows. All you need to do is to keep your hearts and minds pure; let your minds yearn for knowledge and your hearts for love.
"Sir, won't a person become tired in heaven?
Give him honey to eat and flowing rivers to swim, but then what?
How many times can a person enjoy these things?
God creates a person and tells him: See! You will become calm only with Me, Myself.
Heaven alone won't satisfy you. You already understand that heaven alone would be boring.
I tell you, heaven is the rug beneath you.
The important thing is who you are in love with when you're sitting on this rug."
- Alireza Panahian
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