Reminder: The purpose is purposelessness

The purpose is purposelessness.

I have spent practically my whole life (after childhood) focusing on ‘finding my purpose’. This was seen as the special secret which would divide me from the bulk of people who just muster along. I must have thought I was a bit special, even for just seeking a purpose (I say ‘must have’ because I forget exactly how my mindset was at each stage). When adults kindly told me “Sure you have plenty of time to figure out what you want to do, I still don’t know what I want to do!”, I smirked inside and thought ‘But I do already know‘. Only I didn’t. I just had some vague semblance of an idea of wanting to save the world…

Thankfully I have outgrown the egoism and naiveté of adolescence to realise: neither can I save the world, nor should I want to.

This is not to say I am now one of those adults who goes around telling kids ‘I don’t know what to do and neither should you.’ I am still stuck in this battle between trying to salvage some sense of purpose and identity versus surrendering to what is. I have come to realise that living for a purpose and living in the moment are mutually exclusive. You can’t live in the moment if you have a purpose. When you have a purpose every moment is geared towards achieving some end. You have an agenda and you are trying ceaselessly to shape your reality to fit the image in your head. So of course, you end up missing out on all the magic of what is outside your head… The beauty of nature, the spontaneous wonders, the mystery of just being! When you don’t have a purpose you realise nothing in your head compares to what is real and true and beyond mystery.

So I don’t think it is helpful to be one of those people who goes around telling youngsters to wait around for a purpose to come to them. Better off breaking the ice to them early and letting them know there is no need to have ANY purpose. That’s not to say life is without meaning. What if the point of life all along was to just live it? No strings attached. Live without constantly trying to mould and bend reality to your will. The only reason to keep on living, is for the sake of living itself.

Here are some quotes to illuminate this point more clearly:

“Paradoxical as it may seem, the purposeful life has no content, no point. It hurries on and on, and misses everything. Not hurrying, the purposeless life misses nothing, for it is only when there is no goal and no rush that the human senses are fully open to receive the world.” Alan Watts

“The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.” Alan Watts

“My whole life I have been telling you there is no goal! Life is its own goal. There is nothing outside life that you have to achieve.” Osho

“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” John Lennon

There is no clear right or wrong. No clear answers. Even this mass-extinction/climate change/ecological disaster thing going on, might not necessarily be a ‘bad thing’. Maybe humanity’s time is coming. Maybe some other species/kingdom of life is rising. Maybe not. Why should we push our human agenda to try and save ourselves?

Of course, that is not to overlook is the mass suffering happening all over the world today. Humans living in poverty, slavery, imprisonment etc. If there are humans to be saved right now, we should save them. Same goes for animals – in factories, inhumane farms, zoos etc. However climate change is soon going to compound this suffering greatly and there isn’t going to be much that charities or governments alike, can do. No matter how much money is pumped into helping climate/conflict refugees, the overriding elements of nature will prevail. There’s not much the fictitious dollar can do when hegemonic cyclones uproot entire villages in Central America or when years go by without rain in Sub-Saharan Africa. There is only so much suffering we can fight before we are forced to surrender.

So at this stage it all gets a bit much for the individual mind to handle. Most of us will feel inclined then, TO DO SOMETHING. Once in a while when the news truly horrifies us, we will go seeking for ways to contribute… But in order to actually do something meaningful we have to reflect and ask ourselves ‘What, realistically, is the best I can offer?

You are one person caught in a large, complex, messy, corrupt system. It’s tough to change things, but it is not impossible. However, there have been and are today, too many individuals who have tried to change the world and just ended up fucking it up even more. The obvious example being Hitler and his eugenics theory. Even Albert Einstein, who did do a lot of good paved the way for nuclear weapons and the atomic bomb with his physics…

In my view, the best people I have come across are not the ones who have all the medals, degrees, acheivments etc. The best people are the ones whose presence bring light and nourishment to those around them. Those beautiful souls.

That is not to say, ‘aim to be a person who brings good to others’. That is just another goal, which is ultimately ego-driven and hardly genuine.

In fact there are no goals. Every time you make a goal you take yourself away from reality and the only reason worth living is to experience reality as it is…

So by abandoning this obsession with goals, hopefully you will be more calm and peaceful, less fretful about achieving things. Of course you will achieve things along the way. You will get things done. You will earn rewards, jobs, titles etc. But the difference is you don’t make those things the point.

It took me a while to realise this and even though I did, over a year ago, I haven’t abided by it. I revert back into goal-oriented mode because it provides comfort to the anxiety created by society, family, peers and the media. It is also a way to distract from existential dread.

However meaningless these words may be I am going to write them anyway: It is now my sole intention to live, just to live. Nothing more. I am not fighting for nature. I am not seeking to change the world. I am not climbing some grandiose metaphorical mountain. I do not have purpose. I do not have ambition. I merely want to live well.

Of course living well entails being good, spreading goodness. In fact each one of us changes the world on a daily basis, by our every action. How we behave is what is really important. By being more mindful, more alive, I shall be paying more attention to said actions. Whether they harm or whether they heal.

There is no overriding grand purpose – and if there was, it would be so miniscule and tiny compared to what actually is. The totality of this universe, the mystery of life, is too incredible to invent narratives and categories and arbitrary goals, just to live it. Awareness and consciousness are part of it. Creativity is part of it. Playfulness and self-expression are part of it. Connection is part of it. Spontaneity and experience and pleasure are part of it. But nothing is the whole of it. The truth is big and blurry – and that, is wonderful.

It appears to me that there are a few vital ingredients to living ‘this way of no way’. The first is Trust. Trust that whatever life decisions you make are not a big deal. Don’t be an idiot, obviously. You need to be logical and make sure you get yourself/yourselves into a safe and healthy situation. Don’t stress it though. Even if you have to muddle through here and there, you most likely won’t starve. There will always be problems to solve, but be able to have a laugh when solving them. Otherwise it will just be focusing on one problem after another, until you’re about to die and realise you never made the time to live. So remember, whatever happens, as long as you are in good health and maintain real friendships, things will be okay! The other main thing is a certain detachment from ego. I don’t know how this happens, you certainly cannot force it… that would be paradoxical… The ego trying to remove the ego, for the sake of boosting the ego… but somehow it is necessary to live a bit detached from status and the general perception of you. Being able to do your own thing, to some extent.

Almost losing track of what I even wanted to say now… maybe that is fitting! This piece has been rather sprawling, so maybe I will leave it here for now.

So as a recap and succinct reminder to self: Every time you come into this realisation, that life is best lived without purpose, your experience of life is instantly better. You are more peaceable to engage with, more friendly. You enjoy doing nothing and just hanging out with people. You can let go and laugh more. You are more sexual. You are more spontaneous. You appreciate little things more. You come into your body.
This is the way. Let go. Be peaceful. Enjoy the wonders. Connect with people. Connect with animals, plants, nature… This is it. One big trip! Don’t let capitalist system reduce the phenomenal trippiness of this thing (reality) into one pointless game for achieving wealth, fame, power etc. Don’t even let it reduce ‘thisness’ into a quest to make some part of ‘thisness’ better – i.e changing the world. The lure of saving the world is just as much a trap as money/power-lust. Help to liberate people and animals, of course. But that is never everything, because if all the problems were miraculously solved… then what? If there was no suffering on earth, would there then be no point? Would it be ‘GAME OVER – YOU HAVE WON’?. Nah man. We don’t know a drop of the ocean. Time to wake up and get into the realness of reality, and stay there, most of the time…!



PS- The best art, music, writing etc. is produced when you are not trying to make something good!