"You are the creator of your destiny"
"God has a greater plan for you than you have for yourself"
There is no man who has not heard such rather contradicting words in his life.
Amidst living in a busy city where everyone seems to be running after something, I often find myself pondering over existence and the meaning of it all. Why do it? Why wake up and do the things that we do so effortlessly throughout our lives?
So why are we here? (Wait- don’t open Wikipedia yet!) Well, since the world is nothing but a set of contrasting opinions about any given thing, I’ll start by telling you what I have heard.
One of the most popular approaches is unwavering faith into the existence of a creator, and an energy that surrounds us when we are doing what we are meant to do on earth. As Paulo Coelho put it together so beautifully in the Alchemist, the existence of this world is nothing but proof of another world running spiritually parallel to the one we live in. In a nutshell, do good and receive good; and if not, let karma play it’s part.
"The existence of this world is simply a guarantee that there exists a world that is perfect. God created the world so that, through its visible objects, men could understand his spiritual teachings and the marvels of his wisdom"
Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
But with spirituality comes faith, and with faith comes religion; and if everything really does have one simple explanation, then why are the religions so different and twisted that it is humanly impossible for us to follow any two at a given point of time?
The second explanation is very logical and the one you are bound to arrive at once you imagine a life without the former set of opinions. The universe is a cruel uncaring void. And continuous exploration without (not within, contrary to the former approach) will offer some explanation about how things started, and how with the evolution of the human brains, the universe appears to have suddenly become conscious of itself.
Whether you believe in the magic or not, it is only common sense to play it safe.
So if there really is a bigger power, it would be best to get along and fulfil the mighty purpose you have; give no thought to anything else. And if not, let us continue in our sometimes futile efforts of being happy and keeping ourselves busy with unimportant non sense, until eventually we die.
But any theory arises out of a desire for explanation, factoring in some observations about the surrounding that gives at least momentary peace to the creator of the hypothesis itself. And isn’t peace all we are after?
As I try to reach a conclusion to a problem that seems to have troubled me for quite some time, I remind myself of the words of Soren Kierkegaard - “Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced."
And even though there may be a thousand explanations resonating with the souls of different people, my peace lies in accepting that we may never really find a definite answer to all there is to ask. Afterall, men with too many conclusions tend to live too little. The eggs are already broken, so let’s make sure we make a pretty good omelet out of it.