You are reading a particular chapter of the

book ‘The Purpose of Life’.

Preface

Perhaps the best way to give you context of where I’m coming from and what motivated this piece of writing would be to share with you an abridged (and slightly edited) version of a blog piece I wrote as a teenager titled ‘A confused 15-year old’:

“Is anyone listening? Does anyone care? Do we even matter? I am fed up of living such an ignorant life — a life I do not even know why I am living…

We are born on this Earth to suffer… If not, then why do we see so much unhappiness, so much sorrow? Can’t there be a world full of happiness? A world that has no sorrow, no tears, no repentance, no suffering.

If there was God, if there was somebody divine and supreme, wouldn’t there have been happiness and joy everywhere? Wouldn’t there be no sorrow, no suffering and no tears? If God was real then wouldn’t he be doing something? If there is someone really supreme and ultimate, isn’t he being the one who is causing all the discrimination. Why then are some talented and some not? Some intelligent and some not? Some lucky and some not? Why then am I born into a well-off family with all the luxuries of life, with so many opportunities around me, with so many options when there are millions born into families that can’t even afford to feed them? Is it their fault that they are born into such a family? What have they done to suffer so much?

Life is nothing but a curse not only to mankind but even to the small insects which get crushed under our shoes every odd second.

Are we supposed to fulfill some kind of destiny on Earth? If yes, then what is it? How are we going to know why we are born and why we have to die one certain day?

What is happiness? How do you feel happy? Am I leading a happy life?

I can go on and on about this but I know I have to give up. I can only hope these questions are answered some day. I can only hope that people start pondering on these questions so that they can realize that they are living life in complete ignorance and then and only then will they go hunting for the answers.

In these 15 years of life I have learnt one thing for sure and that is that life goes on…And that is exactly what is going to happen to me. My life will go on and probably none of these questions will be answered. I will lie on my deathbed in a few decades thinking how wonderfully I have wasted my life and foolishly I have played this confusing, incomprehensible game. But for now I am nothing but a confused fifteen year old.”

When I was 15, I was already too frustrated in my struggle to make sense of the world. There were way too many questions and not a single reasonable answer. Nobody around me seemed to know what was going on… There was little hope of ever finding out and I was already prepared to carry forward this ignorance all the way to my deathbed.

But only 3 years later, the truth about life and its purpose hit me like a brick in my face…