Are we conditioned to seek out what we are meant for?
This is the question I’ve been pondering over for a little while now. What started as a concept for a future comic series or book idea, started making me itch a little whenever I read those words out aloud to myself. Do we have a choice, or is it all an illusion?
Now like many twenty-something year olds, I have tried to seek out the ‘secret’, the meaning of life, asking myself and occasionally others; “what is my purpose” and “why am I here?”. Purpose and being successful tend to go hand in hand, once you’ve figured it all out, you are the epitome of success, as I try to grasp that one key, that piece that makes the rest of your life click into place as I have tried to do so through most of my twenties; fearing the fact that I will always amount to nothing if I’m not successful, and if by following my soul purpose, and doing what I was made to do, I finally will be.
But where on earth do I find this soul purpose? Has it always been there, encrypted into my physical vessel, ready to awaken at a moment’s notice and then — success. I’m a complete person. I made it.
I’m not particularly philosophical, I am spiritual but I don’t consider myself a spiritualist — this question actually came from my deep deep love affair with The Matrix, I fell into a frenzy, trying to figure out where such a unique and forward thinking idea could of come from, something that bends your mind so badly that a couple of good paracetamols are needed after watching the entire trilogy in one day. It led me down a path, finding the original inspiration for the movie: Ghost in the Shell. A film I would implore you all to watch, if not for the problematic story line of souls, A.I, and our consciousness, then at least for the level of beauty and art that features throughout. It’s haunting plot caught me, not letting me go for weeks, something a film has never done to me before. And that’s how my question was born. Through hunting out concepts I myself could never dream of conjuring up, this question, this question I have been sitting on, that I cannot answer, is there taunting me.
So I want to be an artist. I also love writing, so potentially children’s books, graphic novels, or comics are the right route to go down right? But am I choosing this, am I in control of this choice, or was this a path that was set out for me long before my body became conscious with life. Were all our paths simultaneously set out before us, interlocking and weaving through time, every encounter now fated, every failure a ‘meant to be moment’ in each of our own individual timelines.
I don’t have any answers to these questions.
Do I believe in the soul? Yes.
Do I believe in the soul having purpose? Maybe. It’s more that I’d like to know that some parts of my life are still uniquely my decision, that some things are down to chance, to hard work, to me, but the soul is a part of me, and so maybe they are in fact intertwined whether I want to like it or not.
Or maybe, we are all hooked up to the Matrix, and I’m not really thinking these thoughts at all.
As for whether or not finding our soul purposes is the key to success, this in itself could also be an illusion, simply humans conditioning other humans, to believe in something to strive for, when in actual fact if we do have choice — then we are choosing to live out the lie that that: purpose, is the only reason we think we are really here anyway.
Do you have a headache yet?
