A Purpose In Life

What is the purpose of life? Why am I here? Why do I feel lost in life no matter how much I try to motivate myself? These are the most common questions asked about the meaning of life and our existence in this world.

I am not sure how many have felt this way, but for me, it has been more than once that I feel lost and aimless in life. Only recently I was surfing online and happened to come across similar issues faced by different people, issues of feeling lost in life.

I first got this feeling many years ago, and though I couldn't quite recall exactly what caused me to think so, one thing I am sure was that this feeling happened whenever I started to see the repeated and tedious pattern of my life, one that I am perpetually trapped in doing things I dislike without much motivation.

When I read the online post of a girl who shared her similar feelings in life, I noticed something interesting about her accounts.

She was a girl who regarded her life wonderful, having a good husband, a good mother and a job that pays fairly well. Yet she felt lost in life and wasn't really happy. Her case was quite a special one because most people who felt this way tend to be less well equipped with the worldly possessions such as love, money and career. From this case, and many others perhaps, I realize that this feeling of being lost in life troubles not only the poor and less fortunate in their pursuits in life.



So exactly what is the cause for this feeling? This is what I gather after much thought into this matter. In a simple analogy, people who have this feeling is like a lost traveler in the woods who finally decided to stop wandering and regain his bearings. He feels no matter how far and long he went on, it would only be a waste of energy walking in circles. Yes, the key words here are walking in circles. But when applied to life, it doesn't literally refer to the physical body doing so, but instead it refers to our feeling of existence determined by our ego, which I like to call the Root of the mind.



Ego is who we think we are. But often people mistake the ego as worldly identity. In life, we are given names and we know ourselves from what we are called e.g. Lucy or John. We tend to perceive ourselves as the face and body we are born with.

Thus this physique together with a given name is taken as the self, hence our every motivation in life is driven towards the benefits and requirements of this self e.g. to live in a comfortable house, to look beautiful and feel wanted, to achieve in profession or career and be known for what we have done.

On the other end, recognizing the self as our physique and name means we are bound to the perception and opinions of our external appearances, our achievements, and our backgrounds. Some of these, such as achievements are changeable, while some like appearance, family background are not. (though appearances can be changed through surgery, it is still not a method everyone is comfortable or able to seek.)

From both ends, we have happiness and sadness as a result of taking our physique and social status as the self. Thus many say that the world is unfair as people are treated differently according to their status and appearance. Truly, this is the case, but that does not change the fact who we really are, that does not change the source of our existence.


The self is not the face, the body, or who we are in society. So then, who am I?


Now comes the interesting part. The main concept involved here is owner and assets. Owner simply means the person who owns and assets are the things he owns. Pretty simple. An owner has the right to do what he wants with his assets, to keep or trade them for other assets. Overtime, his assets can change, from more to less or vice versa, or from a car to a store etc. But regardless of the comings and goings of his assets, the owner is always there, and he will hold the ever-present ability to own something as long as he exists, even if all his assets are depleted. The key fact here is the owner is not his assets, and does not deplete with them, but only rely on them to justify his own existence.

Understanding this relation between owner and asset, now let's go back to the statement- the self is not the face, the body, or who we are in society. So then, who am I?
People tend to take his/her face, body, emotions and thoughts as the self, but in fact these are only the assets.
Why do I say so?

For instance, when we say things like 'My head is spinning', or 'my body is aching', or 'Ouch, stop hitting my arm!', what is the common character that appears in all three sentences? The answer is 'my', the 'owner', the real us, while head, body and arm in these cases are all 'assets', or literally temporary ideas.

Do you get the picture?

If not, think of it this way, if my body is me, then why is there a need to say 'my' before it? Wouldn't that mean something like 'My my is aching' when we say 'my body is aching'? Instead, I could have just say 'body' alone. If that's the case, people will go around replacing 'I am sad' with 'Body is sad, or 'I had a wonderful meal with my girlfriend' with 'Body had a wonderful meal with body's girlfriend.' Similar examples apply to the cases if we were to say that emotions/thoughts or social standing is us.

'My' is the owner aka the real self, who we really are. Thus, 'my life', 'my career', 'my mind' also falls within this same principle, the former being the ever- present owner and the latter being the assets that come and go.

By mistaking the assets as the owner, we perceive the body as our self, we perceive our social standing as our self, we perceive our emotions/thoughts as our self. Thinking so, we are limited to what these assets can do, forgetting totally about the true almighty owner within each and every one of us, which lies as the deep meaning within this single concept-My.

So the single concept that lies in 'My' is who I am, the source of every one's existence.

But this is not the end, but only the beginning of the mystery. Knowing the truth that who I am lies in the concept 'My' is only a crucial lead to realizing who we are. It is like the police who have just obtained the data and particulars of a target, which will ease his search and put him in the right direction to locating the actual target.


In our case, it is to locate our true self, the root of our minds. This is the ultimate purpose of life, for how can an owner utilize his assets if he does not know that they belong to him? When a person begins to understand his own self, the underlying cause behind the way he judges and sees things, he will find peace in life, shape his own mind, feel in line with people and happenings in life, and his feeling of lost and incompleteness in life will gradually dissipate.