Escape the loop – The Hindu

We are a generation obsessed with destiny. Scroll through any feed, flip through any self-help bestseller, and you will be ambushed by the same demanding question: What is your purpose? It is presented as the holy grail of existence, the single thread that will unravel the meaning of life.

But look closer. What has this relentless chase done to us? It has turned thinking adults into frantic archaeologists, digging through every job change, relationship, and hobby for a mythical ‘ultimate calling’.

We see people at thirty, forty or fifty — still trapped in the loop. They find a purpose, achieve it, feel hollow, and start the search again. Others, paralysed by the fear of choosing the wrong purpose, sink into inertia and depression, convinced that without a grand, singular mission, their lives are futile.

This is not a spiritual crisis. It is a mechanical one. Psychologists call it hedonic adaptation, the well-documented phenomenon where humans quickly return to a baseline level of happiness after major positive or negative life changes. Did you win the lottery? You will adapt. Found your ideal partner? You will adapt. Fulfilled your dream? You will adapt. Within months, the achievement feels ordinary. Then the search resumes. The loop is not meaningful; it is mechanical. And you are not broken for being stuck in it. You are simply human.

Let us stop this charade.

Ask yourself: Who wrote the rule that there is a singular, cosmic purpose waiting for each of us? Are we so significant in this vast, indifferent universe that a celestial script has been written just for our journey? The Socratic method, used in counselling, strips away illusions until we reach a raw truth. And that truth is simple. Ask anyone why they do anything — work, love, create, pray. Drill down past the ego, past the social conditioning, and you will hit the same bedrock: Happiness.

Not fame. Not legacy. Happiness. The relief of a cool drink. The warmth of a laugh. The quiet of an evening. Even in our deepest sadness, we are like springs — compressed, aching, but with an innate, biological drive to bounce back toward normalcy, toward joy.

If every action, however small, is a reach for happiness, then why is this not a valid purpose? Why must we manufacture a separate, grandiose meaning?

And here is the liberating heresy: happiness is not found in a single thing. It is fragmented, fleeting, and multiple. It lives in the taste of good food, the absorption of a difficult task, the gratitude of a favour returned. So why can we not have many purposes? A short-term purpose to finish a project well. A weekly purpose to be kind to a stranger. A lifelong purpose to tend your garden. Why are we stuck on finding only one?

Look at the damage this singular-purpose dogma has caused. Bright, sensitive people spend decades in quiet desperation, not living their moments, but auditing them: “Is this my purpose? Am I there yet?” They treat their own life as a failed audition for a role that was never written.

We need a dose of cosmic humility. We are tiny, minute creatures on a speck of dust in an unfathomable universe. The idea that we were “sent” with a specific, world-altering purpose is not humility; it is the last refuge of the ego. It is a burden too heavy for human shoulders.

The philosopher Albert Camus called this the Absurd; the clash between our hungry search for meaning and the universe’s complete, indifferent silence. His prescription was not to find purpose. It was to rebel against the question itself. Live anyway. Be happy anyway. Laugh at the absurdity of demanding a cosmic script for a creature who will, in a few decades, be dust.

Perhaps it is time to simplify. To become minimalists of the mind. To stop the neurotic chattering that creates mental blocks instead of facilitating life. Strip away the complexity. If you must have a purpose, let it be this: Give back to the society that raised you. Be useful. Be kind. That is concrete. That is enough.

But even that is a choice, not a mandate.

The most radical act of sanity is to declare: My purpose is to be happy. In many ways. For as long as I can. And that is sufficient.

Stop searching for the one. Start living the many. Stop asking what you are for. Start enjoying what you are. The loop ends the moment you realise you were never required to find a purpose at all. You were only required to live. And to live, quite simply, is to seek happiness.

Let that be your quiet rebellion.

dean-feu@jspmuni.ac.in

Published – May 17, 2026 04:46 am IST