adarsh bhat’s blog

Standing by Residency road, I had another one of those meaning-of-life conversations with Niranjan late yesterday evening.

Niranjan is of the view that life is like a puzzle. Perhaps like a jig saw puzzle, or a crossword, or may be even sudoku these days. Let’s settle for the crossword, since it illustrates some points best. The purpose of life is to solve this puzzle. From birth to death, man seeks to put all the pieces together. And your friends, relatives and the happenings around you, with the messages they carry, serve as the clues to the puzzle. You learn from your surroundings, and that helps you solve the puzzle eventually.

The way I look at life is a little different from the way Niranjan views it. Equating life to a puzzle brings along with it many assumptions.

• The presence of a creator. If there is a puzzle, and it is known to have a solution, there must be a great creator up there who creates all these puzzles.
• The fact that there is a pre-existing solution to the puzzle. This brings in the concept of a fixed destiny, or fate.
• The singularity of solution (in most cases). This assumption takes the focus off human effort. No matter what you do or don’t, that’s the solution to your puzzle. You either solve it, or you don’t. But there’s no way you can change your destiny.

I prefer to equate life to a painting. Man is the painter. He has a rough idea of what he wants and a blank canvas in front of him. The picture will begin to take form only if man actually extends his hand and paints strokes with his brush. Onlookers and passers-by may comment on your painting and that may have an influence on your painting. But in the end it is only your brush strokes that make a difference to the painting. Far from being fixed, the end result is unpredictable. It may be pretty, it may not be pretty. It may not even be what the painter had in mind when he started off. But that’s how life is, isn’t it?

What do you think?