This meaningless purpose of life

We look at our purpose of living with a fixed gaze. This becomes such a horrendous expectation that some of us can't maintain it and end up getting a breakdown.

I had a chat by the beach with a Mexican man when we camped and surfed in the area of Baja del Norte. He walked through the border to the US side 25 years ago. He met the woman he fell in love with and raised a child with her. When his kid became a dental assistant working for a clinic, the guy packed his stuff and left San Diego.

"It was not living there. It was working. Those people don't have any purpose in life." He said while picking a piece of wood, throwing it into the slightly extinguished red ambers. Now he works on a construction site, spending his late afternoon chatting with a guy living in a tent by the beach. At night, they make fire and drink some beers before heading home when the air gets cold. He wakes up early and drives to the beach for a long walk on pebbles. I ponder his statement of the purpose in life for many days.

To many, working is the life's purpose. One starts working when leaving university or high school. I started working almost full-time before I finished my university degree. I even took pride in working many hours without being exhausted. Then one generates money and builds the first house, has a family, and keeps spending and earning until their children grow up. To parents, children are their life purpose. I didn't go up to this stage, but I understand.

A professor told me he would travel when his daughter grows up and is self-sufficient. When his daughter left home for her graduate study, he complained that he didn't know what to do next in the empty house. He forgot what he told me 11 years before. His life purpose became the purpose of serving his daughter. She moved on. But he didn't. At one point, parents lose their life purpose in the empty nest.

To people without children like me, work is their ultimate achievement. Keep making money, saving and spending is a way of maintaining purpose in life.

A girl I met planned to retire when she saved 300k USD. After securing two apartments and a good number in her bank accounts, she was worried that would not be enough if the pandemic happened again. The pandemic changes her perspective on that 300k number for good. She didn't retire as she had planned.

The story of this girl is very typical among my fellows. We were born into this unpredictable world of chaos: climate change hovering around, financial institutions fluctuating with their new gameplay tactics, politics swaying harshly, and burning countries down. We are afraid. We are built into the mechanism of reaction to chaos. Our purpose in life resembles those constantly preparing for the future dystopia. 300k USD is OK to retire. It might be better if one earns 600k. Money and number manifest that frustrating preparation for the next disaster.

The question about our purpose of living becomes much more urgent to people when they retire, no matter how early or late that time is.

My friend's father became a drinker when he retired. He drank heavily in some years into retirement. I still remember he was a serious and disciplined man when I dropped by to go to school with his son. In retirement, the father had too much free time and no responsibility to stop him from drinking. His long-term holiday was cut short when he had to be treated for liver failure because of four intense drinking years. My friend said he couldn't wrap his head around that. His father didn't drink when he was in working age. I chewed over the thought that maybe the man couldn't stand his boring retirement years. Maybe he couldn't stare at his wife and apartment all day long when he had nothing to distract from.

I met people struggling when they have no race to run or no achievement to make. This happens to young freelancers or early retirees. One gets excited in the early years of freedom, traveling, and doing stuff. And then one gets bored. Even traveling can become tiresome. Tending to the garden becomes less exciting. Hobbies get mundane by the day. Even your loved ones become a pain in the neck if you have to stare at them for years.

One gets stuck on the track of achievement and motivation. One's mind only works and urges with targets, race, goals, and praise. One is unimaginative. One can't imagine their life without the structure of pressure pushing them into a horse track. A horse is not a horse if he doesn't race anymore. Some fellows go back to work, while others drown quickly in boredom.

Over the years of my traveling, I am often praised as a "traveler," a definition perceived as "having nothing to do" or having time and money to see new things, a luxury in this full-time-job world. I don't think so. If someone asks if they want to turn traveler full-time, I ask them what you would do with all that free time. Then they turn quiet with reluctance.

Traveling is not my purpose in life. Travel becomes boring after some years into it. Even the most exciting trip becomes mundane after seeing exciting things too many times. But I do meet people who are not restricted in this pattern of life purpose I am talking about. They give me suggestions to reposition my purpose in life. Their creativity embraces the value of their emotional journey as human beings. They escape the artificial purpose of living in a rat race.

Bill, a man living by the sea, is a surfboard ding repairer. He was 78 when I met him. Bill has a pure curiosity about life. When he hears something new, he would go and find out about it by reading, asking questions, contemplating things over stories, and trying to understand it with genuine thoughts.

Once Bill learned Indonesian Bahasa, by dictionary and videos, then he went to Indonesia to speak the language. He still speaks the language, although nobody around him speaks this language. Every time we talk, Bill has something he is reading and trying to understand. He brings the questions up, hoping to get some new information. I am intrigued by this constant urge to learn, the pure satisfaction of seeing or imagining new things. Bill often laughs and always has something to do for fun.

Doing things for fun is often not justifiable. When I tell people that I wrote a book for fun, they don't believe me. They shrug it off and emphasize that I must have some passion or agenda to write 200 pages on a topic. I also noticed that this is the most unimpressive answer a writer should make. The statement also feels offending serious readers, thinking I have a cause to serve. So I started making things up; I write for a cause; I write with passion; I write for my childhood. Everybody is happy with the answer as if someone should SERVE something, not their muse.

We take work so seriously. As capitalism wants to put it in your head, you should have some value. Other than that, you are useless, and your worth is zero. Work is overrated, while living is underrated. Then WHAT are you if there is no more work? You are not on the measurement scale anymore. You are nothing. Muse is not even counted in the agenda of living with people nowadays.

Some people get frustrated when there is no more work for them. I once talked to a man who worked as a spelling mistake checker for a newspaper. When his newspaper turned to digital, he was not trained to use computers for the job, so he was suggested to retire at just about the right time with a good pension. But he was so unhappy. He loved the job. It defined his life. He was proud to be the guardian of the morning page. Then the job didn't need him anymore. For him, it was not the pressure of income or being the breadwinner. The job became his identity. He was nothing without it.

Some years ago, I left home for a year trip to South America. I met this man on the trip. He was famous among his friends for leaving home at 16, asking sailing boats or ships for a ride, and exchanging his work on board. "I want to see the world. The world is such a beautiful place. I want to meet people and see them in the eyes." He returned home when he was 30 and established his family with a loving woman.

When I visited, he was collecting giant old clocks thrown away by demolished plazas or buildings. He fixed them and brought them back to life. He learned to fix them by himself. His house has an elephant made of light rope and old scraps he found. It was a magnificent piece of furniture decoration in the house. I was delighted to watch this man recognize joy in everything he touched. He didn't get old, although he was 82 when I met him. Aging firstly is a state of mind; the state of the body follows.

We look at our purpose of living with a fixed gaze. This becomes such a horrendous expectation that some of us can't maintain it and end up getting a breakdown. We try so hard because we think the purpose defines us. Without it, we are nothing. We hope to get so much from that mental investment that when it doesn't give us back as much as we crave, we fall into disorientation.

That Mexican man has articulated the essence of this one-track life purpose, "It was not living there. It was working." By the beach, he plays fetch with a stray dog he adopted. He spends time with whomever he wants. He goes around collecting wood and makes a fire to sit out late on a weekend night. He breathes the ocean. He lives.

Beyond work, there is life. We don't need to simplify our existence into this constructed reality of wealth. We are more than a number. We are better than the habit of draining our being for decades.

I stop searching for life's purpose. There is no good in it.