Ask about the meaning of the life you live

Nowadays life has become a checklist of what you are to accomplish. Those who achieve more of them at a higher scale with impressive Linkedin profiles certifying them as ‘award winning’ and carefully curated Instagram pages highlighting glamorous lifestyles have enviable lives.

Advertisements which pop up urging you to attend master classes asserting that many who have done it have miraculously transformed their lives to earn flamboyant success and win trophies in the pursuit of happiness fuel the need to attain this picture perfect life.

The commodification of fulfilment has a list to tick off like:

High earning job

High bank balance

Fame and reputation

Grand apartment

Car

Kids studying in the best institutes

Children dabbling in a wide range of co-curriculars

Shopping

Designer wardrobe

Daily fitness regime, sports, and a toned body

Good health

Powerful networking

Travel

Regular social life with drinks on the dance floor

Lavish weddings

Grand celebration of festivals

Many friends

Comfortable and carefree life at old age

I cannot even tick one off. However, I see many people ticking off most on their Instagram feed. Lifestyle bloggers seem to be the cherry on the cake of this aspirational lifestyle. Instead of thinking of the best hashtags to promote this cool lifestyle ask yourself if the life you lead is truly meaningful.

Some may say it is as they start their life with a glass of organic green juice, go for a jog, meditate, can curve their bodies to amazing asanas on a yoga mat from Bali, have many exotic healing crystals at home and look eternally young not through botox but by natural ingredient face packs sourced from the most pristine places. Of course, they trek the Himalayas, and attend spiritual workshops all over the world, so have an elevated life.

What if the pen ran out of ink, pencil nib dropped off, and mouse froze when you were about to put a confident tick mark on all these boxes? Whether or not we are ticking off this list, whoever we are, let us inquire about the life we are leading instead of trying to analyse how successful we are or are falling behind.

Ask ourselves these questions:

1.  What is the meaning of the life I lead now?

2.  How could it have been more meaningful?

3.  How can I bring in more meaning into the lives of others we know?

4.  Is the life we promote on social media really meaningful?

5.  How can we all get together to make life more meaningful?

In a world where the term ‘self care’ is a highly popular sales commodity achievable by that spa package or seafood dinner at a top restaurant, let us ponder on what ‘community care’ is instead.

Some of us may be struggling eternally while witnessing others having a frolicsome rollicking life. It is hard to ask these questions when you are wondering how you will afford the next meal and school fees for your child, or find a job.

Nevertheless, whenever you can, ask yourself these. Once you do, you become a philosopher. There is no need to study philosophy to become one. You don’t have to quote, critically analyse and debate Friedrich Nietzsche, Immanuel Kant, Aristotle, Nagarjuna, and Shankaracharya. You can be illiterate, never have gone to school, yet philosophise.

I am not saying you shouldn’t read philosophy. The more you read your horizon broadens. However, I am against elite intellectuals who sneeringly snub, halt, and disallow others to philosophise on the pretext that they better earn knowledge first. Philosophy means “love of wisdom.” Do not shut people up dismissing them as incapable of being wise because you are in self-congratulatory mode. Hear them out, you may learn from them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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