one, week, later
I'M ALIVE BABY
Why am I alive?
What the hell is my purpose?
On this four minute and twenty-something minute long rambling my desire for answers turned from desperation to confusion to acknowledgment to gratitude to desperation again.
Alright let’s table this portion of our weekly adventure and return to it in precisely one-hundred-and-twenty-four-words.
This last week has been tumultuous—and I want you to hear that in the most Indian way possible—tooooomuulchuouuuuuuussss.
Let's go through it…
Redownloaded Instagram to convince people to come to my senior night for tennis because I realized it was my senior night the day before senior night yes I am incredibly smart as you can tell.
Had an incredibly incredible senior night (my influencer game turned out to be very “popping”). I won my first real game after a string of losses in a super tiebreaker. Everyone chanted.
#GUPTAGUPTAGUPTAWent to a UCLA meetup and reconnected with a dude whose hackathon I’d competed in two years before. He remembered my name… pretty cool stuff!
Contemplated life.
I HIKED AND BIKED AND MOVED A LOT. I got Indochinese food with my friends, helped introduce one of them to Indian food for the first time, baked muffins (that failed) with my friend, biked until it was dark out with another, and reconnected with an old friend on mission peak after a few years of separation anxiety had gotten too large for me.
Alright now where was I?
RIGHT. CONTEMPLATING MY SOCIETAL AND METAPHYSICAL USEFULNESS.
The majority of what I wanted to talk about was in that audio snippet. Relearning my cosmic insignificance and facing it semi-alone (and I say that because I recorded that right outside of my house) was a tad on the crazy side, and I had discussion after discussion the following twenty-four hours to try and tease apart my place in this galaxy.
I mean think about it.
This world is so vast… and it’s vastness in relation to us is only ever tangentially talked about in our years as children.
That’s why we create religions, myths, and folklore to explain it.
But take a step back and consider this truth objectively—no one really knows.
That freaked me out for a little bit. It took me out of the habits of my present and threw me into an interstitial environment between my body and consciousness.
So I went to Balavihar—the place I go every weekend to study the Bhagwad Gita—and honestly, I’m amazed I never thought this deeply about my uselessness up until this point.
Here’s what I realized.
#1: We are all cosmically insignificant beings looking for significance—and we each do this in a specific, unique way. This way was shaped through our life experiences, relationships, and upbringing—it’s one that many need to consider before judging us on the spot and it’s one I must consider before excusing my worldwide necessity off of an existential crisis I had on a bike outside of my house last Friday.
#2: I don’t need to know. It took conversating, reconnecting with old friends, and more alone time for me to recognize that I didn’t need an answer. Well, partially because there is no true answer—an answer would only lead to more questions.
So yes, I’ll continue to search and wonder, but I’ll accept that this wonder will be eternal. I will continue to get closer and closer to fulfilling this wonder, but the closer I get, I will in fact only get farther away.
And that is okay.
That is, okay.
