THE PURPOSE OF LIFE

This article was published in the annual magazine "Souvenier" published by FSU, IOM.

-Dr. BISHAL GYAWALI

MBBS IOM Topper 2068

MBBS Entrance Topper 2062

SLC Board First 2059

Being a medical student, we have to accept many harsh realities of life, most important being death. Its really difficult to believe that every people dies one day, including ourselves. We have seen many deaths by now, and may be have tried to counsel the relatives in many of those occasions. And it feels, in many of those occasions, that its THAT GUY who has died, its SOMEBODY ELSE who suffered, or even sometimes as “he deserved the death” and we never realize that similar trauma could very much occur to ourselves or our dear ones. Maybe it’s the reason why our behaviour as junior doctors to the patients and patient party has been far from exemplary. But this conduct stuff is not what I want to talk about today.

This thought comes to haunt me time and again “why are we living if we got to go away one day? What's the purpose of this life?”. Many times I have heard even my friends talk like “why should I work hard? I am going to die one day and all these things are going to count nothing at all”. This is really a painful thought. Even I have felt that way sometimes, more so when I had to endure the hardships of final exams.  Why am I studying this hard? Or even if I be the best doctor in the world, people are surely gonna die!! Or What if I die the other day I be a doctor? What's the use of all this? And that breeds passivity and melancholy. On the other hand I see Dr. Randy Pausch on the internet who became more famous after he realized he was about to die of a pancreatic cancer. Had he not had the tumour or not died at so young a age, may be I would have never heard of him. So his death made him more famous than his life.  And listening to him and other cancer patients that I have been acquainted with, I realize the beauty of life and get filled with spirit again.

The most beautiful thing in life, I believe, is life in itself. And the most beautiful thing about life is its uncertainty. I heard a dialogue in a movie once where a character said “Life is short. Whatever time you have is luck”. That really touched me. I have written that on my diary as well. Indeed every day we live is luck. According to the US Census Bureau (for 2009), there are 1.8 deaths per second worldwide, meaning that there are over 100 deaths per minute. There are over 150,000 deaths per day and over 55 million deaths per year. 1500 people die each day in the United States due to cancer alone. So it is indeed a privilege to be living this day, to be able to meet with you, to be able to see you and to feel this air. We had a paragraph in our grade 9 English textbook entitled “The joy of being alive” which still is afresh in my mind. A little boy went kissing all the passengers in the train because he was very happy, happy just for being alive. How many of us are? I can see everyday all of us have so much of complains about virtually everything of our life. We never learn the beauty of anything until we feel we are about to lose them. Be it parents, our love, our friends, our teachers, our college, our country—everything—we appreciate them only when its too late—when the other person has already been in a position where he cant understand we appreciated him/her. Exactly same is the way we deal with our life. We kick it, stretch it, put it under various pressures, never love it, use it in unnecessary stuffs, have no time for our beloved ones, no time to appreciate the beauty of the world, the mother nature and her offerings----until we crack down and know that our life has been numbered. The truth is our life has been numbered from the day we were born into this world. Nothing is sure in life except death. And yet when we live, we forget everything and behave as if we are never going to die and spend our most precious time in affairs that count nothing to our heart—or on the other hand, we worry so much about that death which prevents us from living fully.

I have already mentioned about the statistics of death. Thus every second we are breathing is a kindness bestowed upon us by the Almighty. He chose not to pick us up for death but some other fellow who was just like us. Why that privilege to us? So our aim in life has to justify the God’s decision. We have to convince him that “yes god, you did a great job by not picking me up because I did these- these things for the service of humanity. The world would have really missed these contributions if I weren't alive till now.“ One day we are going to die of course. But before we leave this beautiful world, its imperative on us to contribute something that will leave our mark on this world for days to come. Earning money, getting a good job, marrying the prettiest girl are not the major things in life. Money is of no use after we die, jobs easily come to us any time if we deserve and the beauty fades soon as age advances. But to be able to wipe the tears of at least one other soul completely unknown to us with our money, to help at least one needy people each day, to be able to spend time with your beloved ones are the most important things in life. In word of our Chapman sir “ to be able to leave this world a bit better than it would have been without our having passed through this earth” should be the objective of our life. As I have learnt, the following are the things that people(like cancer patients) who know that they are about to die regret the most: not pursuing their dreams for fear of society, not being there for their loved ones when they were in need because they were busy in their “jobs”, not being able to spend time with their parents and family because they had “something more important to be done”; not helping the other fellow in his time of distress because it was “not his problem”; not laughing freely for the fear of being a joker; not loving children much for the fear they would lose respect and other things like that. We all have big dreams in life, assuming we would live always. But when the day of our departure arrives, it’s those small things that sting our heart the most. Of course little things sum up to make a big difference in every area of life.

Thus the purpose of life, I believe, is to appreciate its beauty, the beauty of everything that’s in life, the value of special persons that are always close to us, the value of love, the value of friendship, the joy of devoting ones heart, mind & soul to achieve ones goal, the joy of helping others, the satisfaction achieved in bringing smile to a sad face, the amazing feel when you could cry with somebody else in their suffering; and trying to spread love, happiness and positivity in everything we do, everybody we meet and everywhere we go. If we could forget the worries of past and future and make the most of whatever time we are allowed to have; and provide some inspiration to the coming generation—I think we would have no grudges when that day of departure ultimately comes to us. In the words of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

“Trust no future, however pleasant!

       Let the past bury its dead!

Act, act in the living present!

         Heart within, and god overhead!

Lives of great men all remind us

     We can make our lives sublime,

And, departing, leave behind us

  Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,

   Sailing over life’s solemn main,

A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,

   Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,

  With a heart for any fate;

Still achieving, still pursuing,

  Learn to labour and to wait.”