Passion

Its one of those perfectly fine days when your time is passing by without too much of a hassle, when nothing particularly startling happens to break the pleasing monotonicity. Its one of those days when you suddenly ask yourself a very simple question. Or atleast I sometimes do: Is there anything 'really' worth spending my life for ? Its obviously one of those tantalizing questions which prod you to think a little deeper but which, at the same time, make you vaguely aware of the fact that if you still do not have the answer to this question somewhere in your gut, you might never really be able to find it. It makes you painfully cognizant of the truth that if you have still had to ask this question to yourself, you might probably just have followed the tide till now. As painful as this knowledge might be, it certainly doesn't stop one from asking the question itself. If only for a purely academic, even futile purpose, nobody should be unfortunate enough to lead a life without ever being courageous enough to stare the stark truth in the eye.

So here I am once again musing over this conundrum. Not that I think I can find an answer. Just because sometimes it feels nice to think that while everyone seems to be passing another day, another week, another year trying to meet the deadlines, shaping their future, climbing up the ladder, I am somehow vaguely aware of the futility of it all. If I remember correctly, Watterson, through his mouthpiece Calvin, once said:

"The problem with people is that they don't look at the big picture. Eventually, we're each going to die, our species will go extinct, the sun will explode, and the universe will collapse. Existence isn't only temporary, it's pointless! We're all doomed, and worse, nothing matters!"

As painfully vestigial life is, it no doubt has to be led. Thats not the worst part. The worst part is that most of us lead hating it. Not hating in the 'I am suicidal' kind of way. But just in the 'It sucks' kind of way. And this is where the question rears its ugly head. There is only so far you can go pretending to be happy before you are forced to verify the authenticity of the facade.

Frankly speaking, I have only met one person in my life who was definitively able to answer this question for himself and I did learn something very important there. Its called passion. Not in the Orkut Profile sense of 'I am passionate about reading and hiking and sports and movies........'. But in the more muted sense of way. Such a passion becomes something so personal that it seems kind of vulgar sharing it with the society on as futile a stage as a social networking site.

Anyways, being a graduate student I often come across people who are constantly bargaining away their time for meeting deadlines and studying hard. I am not saying there is anything wrong with that. I just hope they find the effort worth the investment of something as precious as life and that they seriously enjoy doing what they do. If thats not the case, I hope that they are atleast trying to do something which makes them happy for a considerable portion of their day.

As far as I am concerned, I must say I cannot pinpoint one single thing I could devote my life to. I envy those who have an answer. I am just trying to find it for myself. It might be music (even though I suck and it doesn't matter). It might be Physics. It might be something entirely unrelated. Or it might just be the fun of exploring uncharted waters. Its certainly not money. Its certainly not a lot of scientific publications. Its certainly not a plum job. Life is too priceless to be wasted on things so ephemeral. And its too worthless to be spent doing something "meaningful".