By Atiq Raja
We speak of life so easily, this common condition we all share, yet the word itself can feel both too small and too vast to hold its true meaning. To be alive is one thing; to understand how to live is another entirely. It is the oldest of human puzzles, one that has kept the lamps of philosophers, poets, and mystics burning through the centuries. They have left us not a single answer, but a rich and varied map of the territory, each landmark offering a different perspective on the journey we are all making.
Consider Socrates, that troublesome Athenian, who declared with uncompromising clarity that “the unexamined life is not worth living.” In our contemporary world, which so often prizes busyness over depth, his words strike a particularly resonant chord. We rush, we scroll, we achieve, we react—a relentless momentum that can leave little room for the simple, profound act of reflection. Socrates invites us, even challenges us, to step off the treadmill. He suggests that the path to a meaningful existence begins not with a new action, but with an old question: “Why?” Why do we believe what we believe? Why do we chase what we chase? This internal interrogation, he promises, is what transforms a mere sequence of events into a life of wisdom.
From a different corner of the ancient world, the Buddha offered a diagnosis that can feel startlingly modern in an age of anxiety. Life, he taught, is inherently fraught with suffering, or dukkha. But this is not a counsel of despair. Instead, it is a profound insight into the source of our disquiet. So much of our pain, he observed, springs from attachment—our fierce, clinging grip on transient things. We attach to people, to possessions, to our own ideas of how life should be, and we suffer when reality inevitably shifts. His prescribed path of detachment is often misunderstood as a cold withdrawal. In truth, it is an invitation to a more compassionate and clear-eyed engagement with the world. It is the freedom to love deeply without demanding possession, to feel joy and grief without being defined by them, to observe the tempest of emotions from a place of inner stillness.
Aristotle, with his methodical mind, brought the question down to earth. For him, the purpose of life was Eudaimonia—a concept far richer than mere happiness, better understood as human flourishing. This flourishing, he argued, is not a fleeting mood or a stroke of luck, but the natural result of a life lived in accordance with virtue. It is built through the daily, conscious practice of courage, honesty, and kindness. In the Aristotelian view, we become what we repeatedly do. Happiness, therefore, is not a distant destination to be reached, but a quality of character to be cultivated, action by action, day by day.
Then there is the bold, stirring voice of Friedrich Nietzsche, who ripped away the assumption of a pre-ordained cosmic purpose. “God is dead,” he proclaimed, not as a celebration but as a stark reality demanding a new human responsibility. In the absence of a universal script, he argued, we must become the authors of our own lives. “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how,” he wrote. This is a philosophy of immense weight and power. It calls on us to rise above the comfortable conformity of the crowd, to forge our own values, and to impose meaning upon a universe that is silent. It is a life lived by inner conviction, a testament written in one’s own hand.
And weaving through all these is the ecstatic, poetic wisdom of Rumi, who saw life as a soul’s journey back to its divine source. For him, every experience, especially the painful ones, was a portal. “The wound is the place where the light enters you,” he wrote, reframing our struggles not as punishments to be endured, but as openings to be transformed. His purpose was love—not a sentimental feeling, but a fundamental force of connection to all that is. To Rumi, detachment was the space where true, unconditional love could flow, untainted by clinging need.
So, how does one navigate this chorus of voices? The understanding of life’s purpose begins not with a grand revelation, but in the quiet moments of self-inquiry. It is found in the silence between thoughts, in observing what truly brings us peace, and in listening to the inner voice that the world’s noise so easily drowns out. Purpose unfolds gradually, in the small, conscious choices: in an act of kindness offered without expectation, in the patience mustered during frustration, in the courage to learn and to love despite the risk of loss.
And what of our feelings, this beautiful, turbulent current that runs through us? The wisdom traditions do not ask us to become numb. To feel is to be human. The invitation, rather, is to learn the art of holding our emotions without being held hostage by them. To love deeply, but not to lose ourselves in the love. To feel the sharp sting of pain, but not to build a permanent home within it. It is the delicate balance of being fully in the experience of life, while remembering that we are more than any single, passing storm.
(The writer is a rights activist and CEO of AR Trainings and Consultancy, with degrees in Political Science and English Literature, can be reached at news@metro-morning.com)
