Why and for what do we live?

After spending generally a lifetime in this world of ours, the years varying from
sixty to eighty on an average according to popular human statistics, not many
people actually find the time or relevance to ask the all important question, “What
then, is the definition of Life? Why and for what do we live?” For most of them, it is
just a passing in time from one situation to another, from one problem to the next
and slowly, without even realizing the fact that their days are numbered, the
purpose or objective of life is totally lost on them. Eventuality is the most common
excuse for this oversight and in most cases fate is blamed upon to cover for their
lack of inquisitiveness. Now this wouldn’t have been much of a problem if our
intelligence had remained at the animal level of evolution, but at our level of
thought and reason we just cannot afford to lose out on the chance to experience
and understand the key aspects of living and the inherent truth of our existence, or
simply put – Enlightenment!

If I were to list out the various difficult situations and problems faced in life, there
would be no end to them and there is not much of a difference between the
specifics found in mine, to those making up the lives of others. Right from youth till
the age when adolescence disappears into the formative perambulations of
maturity, there is no dearth of opportunities to study the schema of life; however, it
is the prejudiced proclamations of other’s experiences that limit one’s earnest
process of understanding and forming a thesis of their own experiences. According
the famous essay ‘What is Enlightenment?’ by Immanuel Kant, “Enlightenment is
man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to
use one's understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-
imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and
courage to use it without guidance from another. Sapere Aude! [dare to know]
"Have courage to use your own understanding!" - that is the motto of
enlightenment.” As long as one makes no mistakes, one never learns to succeed
and this is the very verse of life to be kept in mind by anyone entering the arena of
life’s battles.

It is all very easy to state the need for reason and understanding to deal with
troubles, but the difficulty lies in the fact that we forget the basis of all human error
and folly in judgment, which is emotional dependency. As long as the fundamental
decisions at the various turns in our journey of enlightenment, which is exactly
what life is, are made on the rationale of feelings, then we would discover the
inevitability of one tight situation leading into another and problems mutating into
ones of greater complexities. The concept of learning the underlying lessons that
this journey is trying to teach us escapes us completely, naturally due to the
blinding effects of emotions. If we can disentangle ourselves from the emotional
cobwebs and look at every situation from the perspective of an outsider or an
unbiased observer to the story of our lives, then the instrument of control lies
firmly within our hands, or specifically our mind. The great German philosopher
Friedrich Nietzsche once remarked that “one ought to hold on to one's heart; for if
one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too.”

Parental authority is probably the most popularly despised counsel throughout the
adolescent species today, the impudence of which in most cases leads to dire
consequences and yet lasting entire lifetimes as seen in the memoirs of Robinson
Crusoe, “As I had once done thus in my breaking away from my parents, so I could
not be content now, but I must go and leave the happy view I had of being a rich
and thriving man in my new plantation, only to pursue a rash and immoderate
desire of rising faster than the Nature of the Thing admitted; and thus I cast my
self down again into the deepest gulf of human misery that ever man fell into, or
perhaps could be consistent with life and a state of health in the world.” What is
happening in the current social and familial systems existing is that parents are
resorting to prohibitive measures, which is not the logical solution to the pressures
of bringing up the next generation. Why? Because children today are far more
mature and able to grasp situations faster than what their parents were at the
same age. Therefore it is not reasonable for parents to expect their children to
behave in the same way as they did in similar circumstances. They have to learn
from their own experiences, and for this freedom to experiment is very important
such that their curiosity and inspired acts must never be stifled. Parents have to
realize the significance of personal freedom in their child’s maturing process, and
serve only as an unbiased support when the child fails in his/her attempts at
learning the lessons of life.

There is a reason why Kant insisted that maturity is when one understands the
implied lesson in any given situation, without acting upon the guidance of another.
Regardless of the consequences arising from the unguided action, be it success or
failure, the ownership lies with the doer and this makes all the difference in the
process of education or growing up. Even though I had several downfalls and
habitual corrections along the way, I have complete ownership on all of these and
the lessons learnt are immensely valuable, when I observe from where I stand
today. With respect to addictions like alcoholism and overtime work that creates
stress, what people need is awareness and not prohibitive support, and maybe the
people around them need to respect and understand the value of each and every
individual’s decision, that goes towards shaping lives. Decisions are meant to be
induced and not influenced by personal biases.

So, why and for what do we live?

Life is only a continuous form of education, and as the famous poet Tagore rightly
said, “The highest education is that which does not merely give us information but
makes our life in harmony with all existence.” So if the question arises as to how I
dealt with any particular situation in life, or for that matter all of them put together
till now and all that may arise in the future, my answer would be: ‘to keep myself
aware of the fact that every situation is only a process of self-evaluation and an
event in itself, by which realization occurs that I am not an isolated island, but an
indivisible part of a singular body that goes by the name of humanity.’

Wouldn’t this be the perfect answer to the question!