fortuitouspurpose

“You can’t see yourself. You know what you look like because of mirrors and photographs, but out there in the world, as you move among your fellow human beings, whether strangers or friends or the most intimate beloveds, your own face is invisible to you. You can see other parts of yourself, arms and legs, hands and feet, shoulders and torso, but only from the front, nothing of the back except the backs of your legs if you twist them into the right position, but not your face, never your face, and in the end – at least as far as others are concerned – your face is who you are, the essential fact of your identity. We are all aliens to ourselves, and if we have any sense of who we are, it is only because we live inside the eyes of others.” ― Paul Auster.

The thought of being an ‘alien’ to myself made me shudder and seek answers to Paul’s implication by reflecting on my travel experiences. Traveling has made me look at myself as a separate entity from my own eyes; otherwise, the abundance of views and perceptions in my surroundings could have easily drowned my individuality. This is my personal individuality, which I believe is not directly related to my cultural identity (which mainly consists of nationality, ethnicity, religion, social class, generation, locality, etc.). Yes, our cultural origins generally do play an important role in the creation of our personalities, but I have always looked at the world from a neutral perspective. I’m not sure if this was ingrained by my parents or if I just grew up this way, but this quality did not allow too much culture from my environment to stick to me.

In situations where our cultural identities become prominent after stepping out of our own country, which most of the time we aren’t aware of, I was generalized. It doesn’t matter to the stranger if you are truly different from other people who share your skin color or accent.

I believe I have, and continue to, break stereotypes that are often based on evidence and logic but are unjust for people like me. After all, we are an ‘idea’ of a living and breathing human being originating from someplace. What I wish to stress is the impossibility of giving any final meaning to any ‘idea’ because words have no fixed or stable relationship to the concepts or other things they are meant to signify, which is why the meanings of words can only be described by more words. Hence, their meaning is endlessly deferred (by Derrida). You cannot look at the seemingly annoying person sitting in front of you on the bus and confirm that they are possibly unappreciative and inconsiderate. If that person is a word, this word has many meanings that can only be explained by adding further words. I am more than what I seem to be to myself and others.

Dear Paul,

I could be an alien to myself and others, but I am getting to know this person, who is me, through the eyes of others, and I am nothing they imagine me to be. I am unique, just like the other precious diamonds I am surrounded with.

Yours faithfully,

FortuitousPurpose.

Featured image: Remodelled version of Hand with Reflecting Sphere, also known as Self-Portrait in Spherical Mirror lithograph print by Dutch artist M. C. Escher.

In relation to solving the previous puzzle for myself, I was wondering about the purpose of believing in God and the whole concept of an Almighty present in our life to guide us. This was followed by questions like: Why do some people visit temples every week? Why do they travel miles to visit famous temples? And most importantly, how do most of their wishes almost always come true? Mind you, I am not an atheist. I have just grown to not believe in the concept of religion anymore.

These questions had been eating me up for a really long time, which is why one fine day I decided to give in to them and visit temples. I have visited many of them in the past with my family, but I did so only as a family obligation. I would just enter, place my hands at the foot of the statue, join my palms at the center of my chest, and do small talk with the concrete form of God because I really did not know what else I should be doing. Everyone around me would stand the same way, but I couldn’t read their minds to know what praying really was.

I am a very twisted person, and I wanted to really challenge this challenge I was facing regarding my belief in God. That is why I decided to visit a dargah (a temple for Muslims) even though I am a Hindu and, according to my religion, I am supposed to visit only our Gods’ temples (Ganesha, Shiva, Hanuman, etc.). This dargah is known to be a really powerful place where everyone’s wishes come true, irrespective of them being followers of Islam or not.

After getting out of the car, I had to walk for almost a kilometer through a narrow, crowded street filled presumably with worshippers, animals such as dogs, cows, and cats, and shopkeepers yelling out to us from the side to come buy offerings from them. Amidst so much chaos, there were also amputated men crawling on the floor begging for money and food. It was a scene that could only be experienced, otherwise impossible to imagine. I went inside the dargah, and to get to the main worship area, we had to stand in a long queue. This was something I had expected, but for the first time in a place where I had come to seek answers from God (who was in the main worship area), I got them from the people around me.

I came across a man sitting right outside the door who led us inside by tapping our heads with a bunch of peacock feathers tied together. It was believed that the touch offered blessings, while he also expected a small offering in the form of money from us. It was not compulsory for us to give money, but he did expect something in return. How bad could this (believed to be) selfless job be, right? But the kind of life I imagined him living scared me for a second. What about those days when he would not get any money at all? How would he buy his food then? Does he even have a roof over his head to go back to?

Lost in thought, wondering about his life, my attention returned to the queue I was standing in, and I noticed something. Something about the others in the queue with me caught my attention. They seemingly looked sad and broken from inside. It was as if they were here to look for something, but they had no idea what they should be looking for. No purpose and no meaning in life, combined with uncertainty, were probably the reasons that led them here. If I wake up one day with no purpose in life, would I want to live? That was a question that immediately sprung to my mind. Do these people really have a life of their own to even ask for something for themselves? Are these people here to seek help or just to pray for their daughters and sons to get married? Whatever the reason, I was immediately ignited with this power of knowing the right thing to do – Be Grateful.

Being grateful for whatever little I have was God’s or some Almighty-driven superpower’s answer to my question for ‘myself.’ Amidst all the chaos, I understood why it is important to visit these so-called ‘powerful places.’ They make you witness scenarios you do not experience sitting in your huge apartment, crying over not being able to pay the internet bill, or complaining about your miserably annoying drive to a decent restaurant because of all the traffic.

I am not trying to feel grateful out of other people’s misery. I am just feeling grateful to have experienced and learned the most important teachings of life. I am feeling grateful to have discovered the purpose of my life. I am feeling grateful to be able to eat three meals a day, have clothes to wear, live in a house, and sleep on a comfortable bed. The amputees on the street, the peacock feather man at the door, and others from the queue most likely are not fortunate to have all these luxuries. Yes, these people’s miserable faces helped me a little to start the self-reflection process, but I hope that I was also able to emit a positive vibe of self-realization for them too. They experience some joys of life that I might never get to experience. There are always these give-and-take-based transactional events that happen among humans unknowingly. I believe that this is how we humans co-exist. This is also what humanity looks like. Why is there a need for religion then?

I know why temples exist and maybe even the concept of God, but ‘religion’ is still something I am building my thought process around.

I was traveling around the northern part of India about a year ago, and I came across astrologers and palmists sitting on streets as well as in huge shops and buildings everywhere. I am an Indian, and I have grown up in India. These sightings should have been something I normally see, but I saw them everywhere. I believe there was one palmist present every kilometer. Intrigued by these sightings, one fine day I decided to get a reading done for myself. I sometimes look for my zodiac sign forecast for the month in magazines and on the internet, but I had never gone to an astrologer by myself and asked him to predict my future. Honestly, it was a huge step for me, and I felt hopeful about what he was going to say, seeking assurance that my present might be filled with problems, but my future was bright. These feelings were flowing through me without any meaning because I knew that theoretically and logically, it is impossible for anyone to predict another person’s future accurately.

This guy wasn’t even reading my face and behavior to observe how I am as a person to be able to predict something worthwhile. He just took note of my full name, birth date, birth time, and birthplace, then inserted these details into a website that generated a star chart, based on which he spoke about what would and would not happen in my life. He started by convincing me to believe in him by telling me all these good things about myself and a few of my weaknesses too. I was involuntarily swept in right away because everything he mentioned was coincidentally true. He then moved on to talk about how my time for the next year was not going to be fruitful, but after that, it would be great. In the end, he suggested I wear rings on specific fingers made from my birthstones. Surprisingly, at that moment, in that room, for those fifteen minutes, I felt really good and positive about my life. I felt positive about my life after a month full of hardships and recovery from an accident I got into because everything around me was going unexpectedly wrong.

I got out of the room feeling weirdly refreshed, and then reality hit me. Every single word he said to me inside felt assuring, but it is not necessarily going to come true. If people knew what was going to happen to them at every single point in their life, life would be so simple. I would know that I am going to get my dream job at 25, and until then I would just wait, turn 25, and get it? This really does not add up. Does it? Because, to be accepted for my dream job, I need to be qualified and experienced, and I am definitely not going to acquire these qualifications and experiences by sitting around waiting for it to happen to me. This was when it hit me!

The symbolic representation of the existence of such individuals might be to give you hope about life and then prove them wrong. Right now, I might be stuck in a place I do not want to be in, but it is all momentary. What I choose to do in this situation will build my future.

They want you to work towards making your future the way you want it to be by simply walking towards it with your own feet. If they predict that your business is going to go down in the next six months, are you going to just sit and watch it go down? Or are you going to work hard and prove his reading wrong? It all depends on how you want your future to look!

Wearing a pearl ring on your index finger and a blue sapphire on your ring finger will bring you good luck and make your life miraculous by simply believing that it will come true. The positive thoughts produced make it happen. It was weird to learn this through people who nowadays are considered to be fake and unreal by many. Expecting miracles, like a chest of gold appearing out of nowhere on your doorstep, is foolish. Powerful actions are needed to achieve them.