"I read your blog about what this chap was saying," said a friend, gesturing to the other chap in the room, "about purposes and all."
I actually did not hear much after 'read your blog'. Someone actually READ my blog. Yippee Yay!!
"Provided, of course, what you wrote is actually what he told."
Yeah! Right! I should have expected that to come. My balloon of happiness hardly starts inflating before they poke a needle to puncture it. Every. Time.
"Broadly speaking he did," said the other guy.
"Hmmm! You know, I thought you guys were over-simplifying it. Like everyone seems to do these days. I mean, yes, it all sounds nice and clinical when you speak of a man's purpose and all that. But, really, does a man have only one purpose in life?"
"Why not? It's possible that a person does not recognize what his purpose is, yes. But most people really do not chase after too many rainbows."
"Oh, Come on! Can anyone say that he wants social respect, say, and is fine if he gets only enough money to eat? Or that the intellectual stimulation of chasing after dark matter suffices for him that he cares nothing for social respect OR a comfortable living?"
"Perhaps not. But then does every man want to work towards a Presidential breakfast invitation AND calling Zuckerberg and Musk by their first names? OR hungers for a private aircraft and a yacht?"
Ah! This was more like it. I should always have multiple friends around me. THAT way, they can tear at each other and I can get my bhel-puri and enjoy the fun.
"Your point being?"
"Yes, everyone needs a bit of everything. And there is a certain minimal level that he has to have of everything, failing which achieving THAT becomes the purpose for that time. But there is, by and large, only ONE thing that a man cannot have enough of. Be it social respect or money or intellectual stimulation or the satisfaction of serving others. Whichever THAT is, THAT is the purpose of that man's life."
"You will find it difficult to get anyone to say that he can ever have enough money."
"Really? Yes, people WOULD say that, yes, but largely they say that with the tacit assumption that they would not have to sacrifice anything for it. They even sacrifice things to chase it when they do not realize what they are losing. IF, however, they are asked whether they would care to live a solitary life for untold wealth OR a life surrounded by friends and family with just adequate money...THEN you will know whose purpose is wealth and whose is social respect."
"You mean, like those genies granting wishes..."
"Precisely! IF a genie were to give the options and the person KNOWS it will come true...then you will know about them. Though, yes, people CAN be fool enough not to even know what they want."
"Oh! Well! Maybe you have a point there. About people being fool enough not to know what they really want. And then moaning about what they missed on their death-beds!"
"Which was what I was trying to tell this chap here."
Back to me? Why can they NEVER leave me alone?
"But why did you bother? HE can never have enough of only one thing. Lolling around in his bed. Which he is anyway doing."
They say it is a pleasing thing to make others happy. Oxytocin, Serotonin or some such thing. I NEVER found it so, though I seemed to make people laugh around me all the time. Maybe because they, invariably, are laughing AT me.
"That's better than running around all your life and realizing on your death-bed that you failed to chase what is most important to you," I said peevishly.
A red letter day for me! I had the last word for once!
