A Purposeful Life?

What’s your purpose in life?

That is such a loaded question, isn’t it? I am thirty-two years old, going to be thirty-three in a few months and I sure as hell don’t know my purpose. I remember a few years ago, when asked what I truly desired, I would say, “a tension-free life, where I didn’t have a stressful job, with tyrannical bosses and upcoming deadlines breathing down my neck all the time”, and yet, today when I have it, life is still stressful, albeit for different reasons. My wife, who is way smarter than I am, told me that your purpose should be different than your desire or your ambition. For her, it’s service – to children & humanity. Her purpose is a noble one and I wish I could say I had the same. That got me thinking – does your upbringing shape your purpose? My wife was raised in a devout Christian household, where the concept of church and community was instilled in her early on. But was that the sole reason for her having such an honor-worthy purpose in life? Probably not – I believe some of it comes from deep within her & some without, the final product is a sum-total of her upbringing, the person she is, and her life experiences.

Hence, to find my purpose, I must look at my upbringing, my life experiences, and any higher calling I might or might not have. I will not go into my life story in this article – as I have done that a lot before. Instead, I will explore the people I grew up around and what I perceived their desires and purpose were. At the end of this exploration, if nothing else, I’d have successfully reminisced about my dead relatives. And if I am successful, I might find some answers about what my calling really is. I will start with my grandmother because her life was simple. She was a housewife who lived to provide for her husband and children. She cooked, cleaned, worried about her children, and did the same routine every day of her life – save for the few where my grandfather took her on a trip – English Teachers’ Conferences and the occasional pilgrimage. What were her desires? Whenever we talked, my grandmother (or mama, as I called her) would tell me about how she wanted to study beyond the seventh standard when she was a little girl, but her circumstances didn’t allow it. She played second fiddle to my grandfather’s academic career and success and somewhere along the way, even though she never really complained about it, I feel like she didn’t see herself as the star of her own life. She would talk about how her younger sisters were given a better education by her father and went on to become teachers and how she had been a promising student herself and could very well have done it too. She read newspapers diligently every day and kept abreast of current affairs. She was the one who had pointed out the navy and air-force job openings to my father. Maybe her calling was not what she ended up doing, but she was very good at her job as a homemaker. She was insanely hardworking and kept at it well into her eighties, till just a couple of years before her death. It may not have been her calling, but she made her family her purpose and she stuck to it. My grandfather would call it a fulfilled existence.

My grandfather (Dadaji) used to say that the sign of an ideal man (purushottam) was that he was dependable – he was able enough to fend for himself and take care of at least one person other than himself. Mama took care of him and my uncle after him, right up to their deathbeds. She was a purushottam if there were ever any. And so was Dadaji. When I tell people about my dadaji’s idea of a fulfilled life, I often feel like they think he had a rather low bar set for himself. Some might call him an ordinary man. But you have to be in my shoes to see how great a man my Dadaji was. And I am not just talking from a selfish perspective – he took me in after my father died, while in his late sixties. I am talking about all that he managed to achieve in the sixty years before I came into the picture. Dadaji had persevered and flourished against impossible odds – raised in poverty by a widowed mother, he had to take several breaks in his education because he often could not afford his tuition and books. He was older than me when he finally finished his Masters and got a lecturer’s job, which he always wanted. Before that, he worked as a clerk in an aluminum factory, served in the army for a couple of years, and then as a rural schoolteacher where he could barely make ends meet. And after all that, when he finally got the job, he had always wanted, he pursued higher education for better prospects. He managed to get a doctorate and retired as a Professor from a reputed institution a few years after I was born. He built a house for himself so that mama and he would have a place to stay in their old age and not be dependent on their sons. He supported my uncle, who did not have much success career-wise till the very end. When tragedy hit at the end of the millennium, in the form of both his sons taking in sick, Dadaji was there for his children. My father didn’t make it through his kidney failure and my uncle was left with neural deficits after a brain tumor operation. Dadaji’s struggle had just intensified – the sons that were supposed to be his walking stick in his old age were either gone or rendered incapable, and he now had to take care of his ten-year-old grandson. Like always, Dadaji stepped up again. So he might seem like an ordinary man, who was a humble academic with a mediocre career to many, but to the people whose lives he touched, he was no less than Superman. His goal in life, which he often said was also his purpose and calling, was to study and rise beyond his circumstances. Education, for him, was both his stepping stone and a pulling force. While on most days, he would come across as a practical man, who worried about money, my future, and savings, I also knew him to be passionate about literature. His outlook in life was simple – he didn’t have these existential thoughts about purpose – his purpose was clear. When he was younger, he wanted a better life than what he was born into. He managed to do it. He didn’t want to be a dependent in his old age and he made sure he wasn’t. When he was older, he wanted to leave a better life for his family – and he did. 

On the other end of the spectrum from my grandfather and his simple dreams, was my uncle. My uncle (or kaka in Sambalpuri) was a troubled dreamer. He grew up in the seventies when cinema had a big influence on him during his college days. He was a meritorious student at Delhi University but dropped out of his Masters to pursue a career in acting. And since none of you have heard of Anup Kumar Panda, it is safe to assume that he did not succeed. He chose a life that did not have job safety and regular pay and he was at peace with it, even though Dadaji hated his life choices, especially since he ended up funding most of my uncle’s unsuccessful pursuits. My kaka’s pursuits and failures would make a whole different article and I will not go into it now. He believed that his purpose was to perform – on stage, on camera, or like he ended up doing, in classrooms. After his brain tumor operation, he went back to Mumbai to get acting gigs but instead ended up teaching Spoken English to housewives of NRI businessmen who wanted to join their spouses in US and Canada. Did I tell you he was studying English in DU before he dropped out? He ended up making that his career in the last two decades of his life, designing the courses himself so that his teaching was like a performance. I guess that brought him peace. He dreamt of fame and recognition, which never materialized. Unlike my grandfather, my uncle died bitter and unfulfilled. 

I have always been afraid of ending up like my uncle – unsuccessful, jobless, and dependent. Add to that list a new point – as someone who didn’t realize his purpose and died unfulfilled. Lately, I have been looking into religion, thanks to my wife’s circle that I became a part of earlier this year, to answer my existential questions. My family was never very religious – at least not my uncle and Dadaji. My grandma did have her puja room in the kitchen, a quiet corner where she prayed every morning and evening. I never knew what she prayed about. Do you know who else was kinda religious or spiritual, to be precise? My father. Unlike his father and brother, my dad was a soldier and not an academic, and hence I think he didn’t see life from a very existential point of view. He was deeply spiritual in the years that I knew him, often taking me to different places of worship, telling me about the different faiths that existed, but not really pushing any religion on me. But I digress. My father’s calling was duty – duty to his country and to his family. He had a very strong sense of responsibility that he lived by. Sadly, he died when I was ten and I didn’t really know all facets of his life that well. He was in no way perfect, but he was a good father and a dutiful son. He took care of my grandparents when he was alive and even though he had a difficult relationship with my grandfather growing up, he never held a grudge or any resentment. It was very simple for him – he loved and respected his parents. He held a lot of gratitude towards his parents and people in general – and I believe that was the secret of his happy life, however short it was. Even though his last few years were full of hardships, he managed to find gratitude and contentment. On 8th May 2000, he breathed for the last time, waking up from an eight-day coma for just a moment where he smiled at me and held mama’s hand. I want to believe that he lived a fulfilled life in his forty-one years in this plane of existence.

These were the people I grew up around and they shaped my personality into what it is today. I wasn’t raised religiously. I wasn’t encouraged to follow a particular profession. My grandparents gave me a lot of space to grow on my own – they encouraged my reading habit but never told me what to read. I liked reading fiction because that helped me escape. Growing up, my worries were rather straightforward – I knew that my parental situation wasn’t like most of my peers. I knew my grandparents were old and my support system had a shorter expiry date, which meant that I had to become capable of earning soon. So my focus on learning took a back seat, in the sense that I studied to get by without any real interest in my subjects. I chose the easy way out in education. After school, I went for a course that wouldn’t take a lot of my energy and still would ensure I have a job right after graduating.  That’s how I ended up with a career in retail. I used whatever strengths I had back then to carve a path, a somewhat shaky and uncertain one, in my career. My focus was on earning rather than liking what I do. As a result, I came to hate most aspects of my job. Back in 2015, I buckled under the immense workplace pressure of a sales job and sought help from a mental health professional after I had a few panic attacks that felt like cardiac incidents. I was diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder. And from that point on, my goal was to find a less stressful job. But that never happened. It could be due to the nature of the typical Indian workplace or it might be my acute anxiety that revs up the stress in any situation, I kept living a life where I stopped having real goals or expectations from my job. I would go from day to day, solving immediate issues, and getting rid of urgent stressors, rather than finding the joy in my work. Needless to say, it took a toll on my personal life. After a series of unsuccessful relationships, I found my wife, Eva. Eva was different from me in so many ways that mattered. She actually liked her job, something I didn’t believe existed. She had a real calling and a purpose she worked towards. It was refreshing. (Although I am not saying that’s why I fell for her - it’s just one of those things about her that profoundly affected me.)

Finding one’s purpose is not an easy job though. It is more of a marathon than a sprint. When I started thinking about my purpose, I looked inside to find what were the things that drove me. I think a lot, especially about my past, the nature of things, the way people are, and how they interact with each other. Back in 2014, I started this blog page to express my feelings and have the satisfaction of publishing the stories in my head. If you have been reading my articles, it would be clear that my writing is heavily influenced by the things I know, the scenario I have found myself in or the stories I have heard firsthand. I asked myself, “Could this be my calling? Am I supposed to be a writer?” Back in July 2021, when I sat down with the intention of completing a novel to submit to a competition, I realized just how difficult it is to write down every idea when you keep second-guessing yourself and critiquing yourself. I used to be filled with creativity when I was younger. I had nothing to worry about but the ideas in my head. Then the rest of my life happened. I got into the rat race – I worked for ten whole years, filling my head with worries about savings, outings, fancy clothes, investments, future sustenance, etc. And in all this, the storyteller within me got lost somewhere.

As I mentioned earlier, my wife believes in God. I, on the other hand, struggle with it. I am not an atheist by which I mean that I don’t deny the existence of a creator – but I have trouble imagining a creator who is an entity that looks like us and is invested in us. With all the things that have happened to me over the years, it has become difficult not to see the world with a certain amount of cynicism. Life seems too random to be governed by a divine being. And like they say, “If you don’t believe in a higher power, then does anything make sense?” And if nothing makes sense, then what’s the point of anything? I started writing stories and I just couldn’t get myself to write an end that I cared about enough. So I slowed down a bit. And focussed my energy elsewhere. I started pursuing my Masters in English and started watching TV shows that I found stimulating. I started reading personal accounts on Quora looking for inspiration. All in hope of somehow waking up the creative side of myself once again. 

At the same time, as I started spending more time at home, I wondered if this was the life I had been seeking. We had hired a cook and a domestic help so clearly, I wasn’t contributing much to the household chores, so I could not say I was a househusband in the same light as a housewife would, but I was taking care of certain things. And more importantly, I was there for my wife who had a clearer vision of what she wanted from her career. But as you can imagine, it is a bit of an adjustment going from a full-time job to a stay-at-home schedule, especially for someone who has always considered earning a yardstick for success and fulfillment. So I started wondering if I even had what it takes to make a living wage from my writing – I realized that my writing wasn’t as versatile as I thought it was. I couldn’t get myself to write about technical stuff, especially the things I felt I had little knowledge about. I certainly wasn’t a hustler and that seemed like a prerequisite for making money in today’s world. So, I found myself in trouble again. At the same time, every other Sunday, we go to church, and I listen to the pastor talk about surrendering oneself to God and in a state of existential despair, one tends to grasp at straws. But having been brought up in a somewhat agnostic environment, where our weekend afternoons at home were filled with philosophical discussions, I tend to question certain ideas before I can imbibe them.

I feel like most religious teachings make sense, except the one where religion tries to explain everything. While listening to the sermons at church, I keep thinking that we take the holy scriptures around the world too seriously. And I am not trying to malign one book, while I praise another. I haven’t completely read any of the holy books – but from what I have read, I feel like they all have solid teachings, but I can’t accept any of them as absolute truth. Come to think of it, all of the world’s conflict begins when people take these books too seriously and are too rigid to agree that their faith may not be the ultimate answer to everything.  Anyway, let’s not get too political. That’s where I stand regarding religion. We can safely assume that God is not my calling or purpose. Having established that, I asked myself if I could go by the ideals that my grandfather instilled in me and live for my family – which at this point means my wife only. Being a woman of faith, she finds it absurd when I express a desire to compare my feelings about her with devotion. But is it really that absurd a thought?

Moving on.

Another thought that recently hit me was that of compulsion. For people like me, who are not driven by religion, most of what we do is steamed by compulsion. My whole career is an example of that compulsion – a compulsion not to be unemployed, driven by a fear of unemployment and ultimately poverty. Isn’t it interesting that while growing up, I witnessed four people with their distinct callings in life and yet, I didn’t base mine on any of theirs? What I did base my belief on was their failures or fear of failure – like my grandfather’s fear of being dependent or my uncle’s helplessness. This may be high time I figured out my purpose, but what if I really don’t have one? 

Where do I go from there?