What is ones purpose in life?

People struggle with this question, which is

thrown at them in various forms and ways throughout their life. They dodge.
They lie. They try and convince themselves that there is one true goal that
theyre not able to decipher; that they will find the elusive answer one day
while on a flight which hits severe turbulence and they look out and see a
tornado and they have only about 90 seconds to do and say and think and
find answers to whatever theyd want for the rest of their lives, about what
they missed out on. It bugs us, because there are so many people out there
we admire, we look up to them, and they all seem to fulfil a very specific role
in the world that they seem to have been cut out to play, and they seem to
have had that realization at a stage early enough to make the realization
count for a lot of recognition and many, many currency units.
For thousands of years, Homo sapiens only lived to survive, to get their basic
needs fulfilled, to get their food and shelter in order, and at other times to
amuse themselves throughout their days using various activities; they did
not have any extremely specific goals or achievements driving them in life.
Our minds today too are highly representative of the hunter-gatherer
mentality: the majority of us are happy with maximizing the basic comforts
we can conjure up for our survival, and the rest of the time we can spend
doing that which gives our mind pleasure. There are two theories I would like
to float around at this point about people that are highly driven in life. First:
that the things that they do are representative of the basic needs and wants
of their life. It is unlikely at first that such a thing is possible, but when
somebody repeats something enough number of times, which was hunting
wildlife for our ancestors, and which can represent the specific jobs people
take up in the current context, it can actually be highly analogous. The return
to the hunter was the meal at the end of the day that he could enjoy with his
social mates, for the modern person, the return is the same, only the process
has been made progressively complex in the form of salaries, varied
compensation in different walks of life etc. But for someone thinking of their
activity as the hunting job, is to make that activity, in a sense, fall to the
level of only sustenance activities. There arent people known for their ability
to sustain themselves, people arent famous for having the uncanny ability to
make money; people are famous for doing things so well that they can
sustain some extraordinary levels of sustenance.
Now let us come to the other possible aspect of viewing the work one does,
whatever that may be. Humans have been wired to do things they enjoy
doing, both as a natural thing (because every living being does what it thinks
is good for it) and of course, the habit of engaging in leisurely activities. In

this perspective, people view their work as a leisurely activity, something

that gives them a lot of joy while performing. But is the joy of performing a
certain activity a reward enough in itself to make people master it to such
great extents that they aspire to become the best at it? Surely there have to
be other factors that drive a successful person. Sachin Tendulkar had a very
good combination in that sense- he got pleasure out of something, he got the
social backing to pursue that pleasure seriously because luckily, people
perceived the things he did in such a positive light as to reward him for doing
it well. After a point, the pleasure was accompanied by the thrill of
achievement. The thrill of achievement has always been there in human dna
(figuratively, for the geeks) ever since the cognitive revolution set in, and
humans started doing really smart things at smaller intervals of time. This is
the thrill that accompanied probably the single most influential mass
behavioural shift for humans in the form of the agricultural revolution it was
a grand departure from the uncertain days of the hunting and gathering, the
nomadic nature of settlements, and people were thrilled by their ability to
willfully exploit the nature they had been unknowingly exploiting by that
point. Somewhere in between, the incentive shifted, in whatever measure,
from the love of the activity, to the thrill of the achievement. This is
inevitable, because due to the large population of human beings, any activity
which is deemed important enough has earmarked best performers of the
same in the world, and to reach that level, the activity will have to be done
repeatedly, in order to outdo multitudes. The simple love of such an activity
cannot sustain such requirements, because a leisurely activity has the
absolute characteristic of being done or not being done at the whim of the
person who likes it. The early tribes might have loved a good song and dance
sequence, and enjoyed performing it for each other. yet, some of the people
found it invigorating to see others appreciate what they were doing. At some
point, the combination of the enjoyment of the activity and the achievement
in the form of impressing people and gaining their respect made them try
and perfect the dance and song sequence to a greater extent, so that they
would be singing and dancing in practice even though they would not be
doing it purely for the leisure of it. Coming back to our example, the
immediate and larger society, his own interests, and some amount of natural
endowment of basic physical abilities allowed Tendulkar to become, in
modern terms, a successful master of his destiny he realized what he was
born to do, and he did it. We know, of course, that his is by no stretch of the
imagination, true. In the absence of either the love of the activity or the
addiction to the thrill of achievement, this man would just be, at best, a
common 5 foot 8 state cricketer with temper issues.

In a similar vein are seen achievements that people achieve while playing
video games, a completely contemporary phenomenon. This excerpt is taken
from an article by rick lane, ceo of trading technologies: The advantages to
achievements in development are plain to see, but there might also be
drawbacks, once again related to player psychology. Achievements can act
as guidance on how to play a particular game, externally motivating your
method of play. As they become increasingly assimilated into gaming
culture, it is possible that they could override a player's own internal
motivation for playing. So, in an open-world game such as the upcoming
Skyrim, players might forego exploring the world in their own manner in
favour of an achievement for, say, climbing to the highest point on the map.
Franklin D. Roosevelt knew this when he said, Happiness lies in the joy of
achievement and the thrill of creative effort.
As human development has progressed, though, there has progressively
risen one more level of achievement, one that is distinct from the usual
social appreciation effect. Its called self-actualization. This sense of
achievement is, in many aspects, beyond the influence of others
perceptions. The argument can surely be made that some amount of selfactualization does in fact creep into anything that anyone does, but selfactualization rarely becomes the driving force in ones major activities in life.