Purpose Of My Life

HOW THIS QUESTION FOUND ME

I have developed a habit, by accident and not design, for some years now — sitting quietly in the early hours before the day begins, or in the stillness after it ends, when the house has gone silent and there is nothing left to do but think. It is in these hours, more than any other, that old verses I learned decades ago come back to me unbidden, asking to be turned over again, examined in the light of a life now lived rather than a life still ahead.

One such verse returned to me often enough that I want to hand it to you, exactly as it has always come to me:

विद्या विवादाय धनं मदाय, शक्तिः परेषां परिपीडनाय।

खलस्य साधोर्विपरीतमेतत्, ज्ञानाय दानाय च रक्षणाय।।

For the wicked person: knowledge becomes a weapon for argument, wealth breeds arrogance, and power is used to oppress others. For the good person, it is the exact opposite — knowledge becomes wisdom, wealth becomes generosity, and power becomes protection.

I have always admired this verse for its precision — it hands you a test you can run on yourself at any moment, using nothing more than what you already have: your knowledge, your wealth, your power. But this last time it returned to me, sitting in that quiet hour, it did something more. It stopped being only a test of character and became, unexpectedly, a question about purpose. If the same gifts can bend life in two such different ways, I found myself asking, then what decides the bend? And why had I spent whole decades running this test on other people, in my mind, without ever once turning it fully on the direction of my own life?

That question sat with me longer than most. It is what led to everything that follows in this note, collected, collated, and interpreted with the help of an Intelligent Assistant.

A CONFESSION, BEFORE ANYTHING ELSE

I did not ask myself the purpose of my life for most of it. I built things, chased goals, solved problems, raised a family, checked off the milestones the world handed me one by one — school, career, marriage, more responsibility. It was only in those quiet hours, looking back rather than ahead, that the question finally arrived in full: what was all of this for?

I am writing this so that you don't have to wait as long as I did. Not because arriving late is a failure — I don't think it is — but because I've since learned something that would have changed how I lived those years: the question doesn't wait for you to ask it. You are answering it every single day, whether you notice or not.

YOU CANNOT NOT CHOOSE

Here is the strange truth I discovered: even when you never sit down and ask “what's my life's purpose,” you are still living an answer. A philosopher named Sartre put it simply — we are “condemned to be free.” Drifting is itself a choice. Coasting is itself a direction. The only real decision you have is whether to choose your purpose deliberately, or let it be assembled by accident out of habit, convenience, and other people's expectations.

So the suggestion I have for you is simply this: ask the question early. You don't need the answer today. You just need to know you're allowed — and expected — to look for it.

WHY BOTHER LOOKING?

You might reasonably ask: why not just live, and let purpose sort itself out?

A doctor named Viktor Frankl, who survived years in Nazi concentration camps, watched who among his fellow prisoners endured and who gave up. The difference, he noticed, wasn't strength or health. It was whether a person still had a reason to keep going — someone to return to, work left unfinished, a meaning not yet fulfilled. His conclusion has stayed with thinkers ever since: a person who has a “why” can bear almost any “how.” Purpose isn't decoration on a life. It's what makes hardship survivable.

And long before Frankl, Aristotle offered the other half of the answer — purpose isn't just for surviving the bad days, it's what makes the good days actually good. He believed happiness isn't a feeling you chase directly, like a butterfly with a net. It's a by-product of living well — of exercising your character, your reason, your best qualities, consistently, over a lifetime. Chase the right way of living, he said, and happiness follows you home.

WHERE DO YOU LOOK?

If purpose is something to build rather than stumble into, where do you start looking?

The Japanese have a lovely, practical idea called Ikigai — your reason for getting up in the morning. Picture four circles overlapping: what you love, what you're good at, what the world needs, and what someone will pay you for. Where all four meet — that's worth investigating. Not every purpose has to sit in that exact center, but the four questions are worth asking of anything you're considering giving your life to.

WHAT SHOULD IT ACTUALLY BE MADE OF?

Here I turn to wisdom older than any I've mentioned so far — the framework our own tradition offers, called the four purusharthas, the four legitimate aims of a life:

❧    Dharma — living rightly, your duties and responsibilities

❧    Artha — building security, wealth, competence

❧    Kama — enjoying life's pleasures and desires

❧    Moksha — seeking freedom, meaning beyond the material

None of these is looked down upon. You are not meant to renounce wealth or pleasure to be a good person — but dharma is meant to be the quiet governor sitting over the other three, deciding how you pursue them.

Which brings me back to where this began. The verse I opened with is, I think, the simplest diagnostic ever written for a life well-lived. You will have knowledge one day. You will have some money. You will, in some form, have power — over a decision, a household, a team, a child. The verse doesn't ask whether you'll have these things. It only asks: when you have them, which way will they bend?

The Stoics — Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus — offer the last piece: discipline. Focus your energy only on what is actually yours to control — your own choices, effort, and character — and let go of the rest. Purpose, to a Stoic, isn't a destination you arrive at. It's showing up, day after day, and doing the next right thing well.

PUTTING IT TOGETHER

So if you ask me today what I wish I had understood decades earlier, it is this arc:

You are always answering the purpose question, whether you ask it or not — so ask it on purpose. You need an answer not as decoration but as fuel — to endure the hard days and to make the good ones count. And whatever answer you land on, run it through that old verse from my quiet hours: does it serve you, or does it serve those around you too? Knowledge, wealth, and strength are neutral. You are the one who decides which way they bend.

I didn't ask this question until late, sitting quietly one morning with an old verse for company. You don't have to wait for such an hour to arrive. You can start now.

❧