What is the Purpose of My Life? (Part 2)

Story 1:

Death is certain, life is meaningless. We are running on borrowed time and might die at any moment. We don’t take anything with us. Soon, we won’t even exist.

Well that’s one story. We can choose to tell a different one. Maybe a more apt description is- we can tell the same story from a different angle.

Story 2:

Somehow big bang happened. Laws of physics started to reign supreme. Time began. Things condensed and stars, planets etc appeared. One planet got some acid and stuff that can pass its data to the next generation. Natural selection took in charge. Soon there were life everywhere. Humans appeared. They have feelings and everything else, things that the other animals have. But they also think. Which is simply learning from the past and planning for the future.

But, some of them started suffering from their haunted past or glorious past they no longer have (or stand to lose) and worrying about the future.

This defeats the purpose of learning and planning. We learn and plan to make our experience of the world better. Latching on to the past just produces unnecessary suffering. Worrying about the future is wrong as death is our future. Entropy is real. Everything, even life will be taken away from us. All we truly have is the present moment. And the lessons from our past and our ability to plan for the future.

This makes us human.

If the purpose of a shoe is to shield it’s owner’s feet from the ground and the purpose of a  dog is to be a dog, our purpose is to learn from the past and plan for the future. While we live in the moment.

They aren’t at odds with each others. The lessons aren’t in the past, they are with us now. They plans aren’t in the future- they are here with us right now. Now is when we apply the lessons and take action for the future. Life is now.

Then I conclude, the purpose of my life is to live in the moment while I apply lessons from the past and take proper action for the future. Because we can. Because this is our feature. The purpose of a pen is to write because- it can write. That’s its best feature.

Do I like this purpose? Well mostly no. I’d rather contribute to something that would last forever. But sadly, we haven’t come across any such thing that needs my help. Like, laws of physics may last forever, but how to I contribute towards it? It doesn’t need my help!

Who am I?

I was watching Shelly Kagan’s lectures on Death. It raised questions in my mind about who I really am.

Am I a soul? my brain? My personality?

I can feel 3 kinds of things existing inside me. First, I see my current thoughts and feelings.Then I see my memories. beliefs, attitude etc which are the building blocks of my personality.

There’s something else of course. The witness/ watcher.

Without this entity in me, I wouldn’t even be aware of my current thoughts and feelings.

I guess this is what Eckhart Tolle calls presence and other teachers call consciousness.

My first inclination is to regard this ‘watcher’ in me as the real me.

This part after all, has been the single most consistent thing that exists withing me.

My thoughts are random and often contradict each other. Same characteristics apply to my feelings. My personality on the other hand has changed at least 3 times since I have been alive. Only the watcher is untouched.

But, what differentiates my awareness with your one? We all have this awareness but isn’t it the same for all of us?

If I have a head trauma and lose the continuity of my experience, the watcher is still there.

But, my thoughts, feelings and personality will be drastically different. In that case, is it still me?

I am unable to answer that yet. I seem to feel like my awareness is me as long as there is continuity of experience. If my brain loses all of its memories then that will be the death of me. The watcher that used to identify with me will now serve someone else’s experiences.

But even that explanation sounds wrong. How can my awareness ever be someone else? If all about me is my personality then I could be extracted as data and uploaded to the cloud. But, is all that data (memories, beliefs etc) me? That doesn’t sound right!