‘What gets you out of bed in the morning?’

“What gets you out of bed in the morning?” is bound to elicit varying responses based on who you’re asking. A farmer might see his sole purpose of existence as tending to his crop and cattle, whilst a nihilist might.. well let’s not go there.

Of course, it’s not just nihilists who would argue that having an underlying purpose in life is slightly overrated. Focussing too much on a ‘purpose’, whether it’s your career or family or building a legacy, might cause a lack of fulfilment in the ‘here and now’.

This isn’t me advocating a hedonistic approach to life, though.

The desire to be fuelled by a purpose in life is a welcome by-product of our evolution, after all. Now that we longer need to wake up and plan how to get through the day without going hungry or being chased down by predators in the wild, ticking ‘survived successfully’ off the cave wall checklist every night will no longer suffice.

We need something bigger to justify going through the monotony of the everyday. And, although having just that vacation every few months to look forward to is nice, it just doesn’t make going through the motions on regular days worth it.

So yeah, it’s good to have a purpose in life, a plan charted out with timely milestones, be it personal or professional, that give you something to work towards and achieve fulfilment from. However, I’ve found that this often leads to being too focussed on constant milestones, rather than stop to acknowledge that where you are now was also part of the plan mapped out a few months ago.

I’ve grappled with finding the balance between ‘working towards something fulfilling’ and ‘just staying in the moment and savoring it in’, and the sweet spot is excruciatingly hard to hit upon — Finding that mental state of permanence and inner peace without losing the challenge of regular mini-achievements to feed upon.

I’ve sort of found the concept of absurdism and the myth of Sisyphus to make a lot of sense, striking that wonderful balance between existentialism and nihilism. Trying to discover the objective or absolute purpose of existence might be ultimately futile, but that does not mean we need to resort to nihilistic tendencies and renounce everything as ‘pointless’.

Subjective ‘purpose’ is a very real, albeit not tangible, thing.

We are not mentally equipped to traverse an entire lifetime with the deep-seated knowledge that the ways of the universe might ultimately be meaningless, and the constant reassurance of achieving things and finding a purpose is just what we need to keep going.

As long as, of course, we acknowledge the ultimate truth every once in a while — “All I need to get out of bed in the morning is a reason — and even a wildly absurd one will do, really”