Purpose of Life

It’s been about nine years since I started practicing rock climbing. Sooner, I was sucked in to climbing, and there was a time when I also started to realize that rock climbing is my Dharma and I climbing is my Karma. Similar to a Kshatriya’s Karma is to protect the society, in-line with his Dharma. In the meantime, I introduced numerous people into climbing and few took it forward but most simply discontinued. However, I’ve the satisfaction that I made something available for a few, when they didn’t even knew that such a thing existed.

Alongside I started long-distance running too. It’s been about six years since I’m doing performance-running. That is- training for the run, timing my runs and keeping track of my personal best runs and improving on them. Over years my training rigor was also increasing, consult experts advise for my training and read literature too.

I used to balance my various physical activities- rock climbing, running, working out in the gym and all other outdoor activities like trail biking, hiking etc. However, everything was still circling around the central core being rock-climbing; until it took a drastic turn somewhere during the mid of last year.

In July 2013, I and my running partner (Abhilash Reddy) took on training about nine of our friends for a 10kms long-run. This is when our running schedules took a definitive program. I started running more and more, and coach more and more. There was also a definitive structure for me to train myself and coach others. That’s when I came cross a point when I preferred running and coaching over rock-climbing. When it repeated a couple of times, I had a genuine concern over my preferences. Just a few months back I strongly believed that climbing is the most exciting activity, which had the potential to engage me for my whole life; it was “then” my expression of life; my Purpose of Life. This entire theory began to shake when I chose to run, over climb! I felt uncomfortable making that choice, as I was seeing that my purpose of life is shaking because of my running. My purpose of life was starting to change from climbing to running and from running to coaching. That was not a comfortable-few-weeks of my life.

When I inquired more into it; something opened-up for me. I engaging in rock climbing or running or coaching people in running were all simply different mediums for me to be in action to recognize the real purpose of my life. When I recognized it, I experienced complete freedom and excitement. Excitement to be in action. Excitement to live. The purpose of my life that I identified was that of “people being healthy around me”. This very statement connected all the dots over years of my climbing and running. In both these activities what I identified was that I was consistently introducing more and more people into the sport, putting them into action and making them physically active and physical fit. Irrespective of the sport I was engaged in, what I was doing was the same; putting people into action and positively impacting their physical health.

What was surprising in this inquiry was, I observed that my purpose of life kept changing or evolving over time- first it was rock climbing, then it was running and then people being healthy around me. While the former was in play, the latter was still non-existent.

It was still itching for me to validate my theory of evolving purpose of life. To find peace in this theory, I took on to observe the life history of Mahatma Gandhi. I was not comparing here but wanted to get settled with the evolving purposes of ones life.

For Gandhi, when he founded the Indian Congress or Pheonix settlement in South Africa, the purpose of life for him could have been merely bringingforth equality for colored citizens in the Victorian Empire. When he returned to India and Gokhale asked him to go around the country, his purpose of life might have got evolved to Freedom for India then. By the latter part of his life, the freedom for India might have got evolved to spreading the message of non-violence to the humanity! Probably if the great man had lived for some more time, something else might have got evolved as his purpose of life and something bigger might have got caused in the world.

In all this inquiry inside me, the one thing that struck me was the fancy-worded Purpose of Life did not get defined clearly unless the service to the other human being or contribution to the community began. Now, I stay excited for the next-bigger purpose of my life to crystallize. However, the key for this is simply to be in action fulfilling my current purpose of my life.

So, come, let’s run. :)