The Purpose of their Life

There are some of us who are the thinking types. We look at the clear blue skies and wonder ‘what is the purpose of life’. I am one of those. I am also one of those who finds her answers by typing the thoughts down.

I have this house help who lives in the Middle East to provide for her family back home in India. She must be around 30. She got married to her late sister’s husband because the sibling died leaving a daughter behind. After getting married, my maid had another daughter. She lived with her for 1.5 years and then left her with her grandmother so that she can earn money and provide her a comfortable life. It has been four years now and she has not seen her daughter.

There is another maid who has daughters who are now 16 and 20, respectively. Last year the 20-year old got married. My maid spent all her life’s savings to ‘give’ her away. Not only this, she had to spend six months in India to sort out some issues. When she came back she had lost her previous jobs and had to look for new ones. Fast forward nine months, her daughter was now expecting her first baby. Of course there was no one else who would help her daughter give birth. So it has been two months and she is again in India, spending all her hard-earned money on rituals.

My taxi driver got married and came back sans the wife because it is costly to bring here here. Also, he has a mother back home who needs a 'care taker'. He went for a short vacation and after nine months his first child was born. Since then, he has seen his child once and hasn't got the resources to bring his family here. 

It is the same with almost every person working in homes, driving taxis or working as a labour here. I wonder what inspires them. I wonder if they have ever thought ‘what is the purpose of their life’.

If we were animals without dreams, aspirations and thoughts, I would have considered this normal. The purpose of life would be to make another life, help it grow and your job is done. But I live in an over-populated earth. Although I have enough resources and my sacrifices wouldn’t be as much, I still think it is a huge price to pay.

Our society has ingrained certain beliefs in us. It has laid down a certain course of action – study, work, get married, have multiple children, die – everything else is secondary. If some of us decide to do something out of the ordinary, we are made to question our own decisions. That is how society f***s up our mind.

To me, the purpose of life is to be happy and take care of what God has given you. Our first responsibility is to take care of our own body because it is really a gift. Everything else is secondary. These people who live here and work for their children’s upbringing don’t eat enough. They are dying a slow death. They are not even living with their kids who can give them the ‘happiness’ they must have aimed for when they gave birth. Some of them even have extra-marital affairs here to get emotional support from another human being. Needless to say, their spouse back home indulges in the same.

I know that it is education that makes us question the norms. They probably did not have the chance or ability to go against the system. We may not have a reason not to have kids, but seeing them miserable is definitely a reason to question the whole process.

Isn’t it time people started advocating both sides of the coin? There may be a lot of happiness in having children, but there may be more joy in not having them. It is time our world started seeing childfree as a normal thing rather than a selfish act so that these people, who sacrifice the most to adhere to the world’s established rule, are enlightened.