Meaning of life

I question myself everyday. I question myself on whether I live as I ought to, or by virtue of chance. Is my life the way I want it to be or is it a result, albeit and an unintended one, of myriads of happenings that make up each day? It is a difficult question to answer, both factually and emotionally. Based on facts, retrospectively, things 'seem' to have happened on account of choices I made, and hence where I am today is precisely where I had wanted to be. If I ask my heart the answer would be dramatically different. I am where I am, no doubt, because of the choices I made but, an unseen hand, call it fate, call it chance, call it kismet, played its own hand, and amalgamated my choices with several other variables, hence translating them into something else.

I don't think I am alone in thinking or questioning the life that we eventually find ourselves leading. Why does this happen? or does it only happen to a few people, perhaps the ones with a depressed and melancholic bent of mind. I simply don't know.

Wherever we find ourselves, at whatever point in our life, should we not take a few moments to assess and analyze where we are and why, and whether we are on the right track to begin with? I want to know the answers to where, why and wither? I want to know where exactly I started from, the beginning of my journey and where at that time I planned to go or thought I'd travel to? What all transpired during the way. Did I lose my way? or did I realize, with the added perspective gained, where I was heading was not the right place for me, or the path I had taken was wrong, and therefore changed stations to get to another destination? Have I made the right decisions in choosing my route, as well as my end goal?

The thing is I am still travelling and while I am in the compartment called Life, I can only have a restricted, partial and an incomplete view of what is outside this compartment. My view is defined and constrained by the only window I have in my cell from which I can see the changing vistas. At times the scenes I witness are beautiful like the sparkling dust of stars on cloudless nights, magnanimous sunrises that burst into vibrant colors. At other times I see hunger, squalor, death and misery. Some people come into the compartment from time to time and I talk to them. They tell me of the world, of their own journeys, of what they see and have seen, of what and where they were, and what and where they intend going. I learn of things that I have not seen, I hear of things I have not heard. In times when I find myself alone, and I very often do that. I think. And I wonder. I wonder, if with all my limitations - of choices made, of tickets bought to places that I didn't go to or, places which ceased to exist while I travelled unknowingly towards them, of people who came into my compartment, of what I saw outside my window - I could have possibly lived within my compartment a life which 'meant' more, or means more now.

Sages and Prophets, intellects and philosophers all have given us definitions of a 'meaningful' life, and how best to achieve it. Is trying to clasp a brooch of 'meaning', a set 'philosophy' to our lives the way to be? Why can't we just 'be'? I can see eyebrows being raised here. We are so desperate to attach purpose and meaning to our lives for we feel overwhelmed by all that is around us - the immensity of time, the vastness of space, and our insignificance in the scheme of things propels us to look for a grand scheme which will explain why we are here and what difference we make by our being here. If we ponder on this we would come to understand that whether we lead a legendary life or a simple one we fulfill one huge and basic purpose and that is to live the life we have been granted.

As for myself, I have come to the conclusion that living in harmony with my self, understanding my inner being, accepting it, and being one with it might be the only 'meaning' to my life. By this harmony with my inner self I mean accepting what is within the compartment of life I am occupying and knowing what's out there, visible through the window, is how it is. Being at odds with my situation - being in the compartment - or continuously with what's outside the window, or with the people who come in is meaningless.

We must start somewhere to make peace with the world and our place in it. And the best place to begin is with ourselves. If I can manage to acquire harmony within and without I would have given meaning to my journey - start, middle and end.