Every morning I see my husband enthusiastically photographing the peacocks that reside around our house. When I ask him why he keeps capturing them incessantly on his phone, he excitedly tells me, ‘I will hold an exhibition shortly and I will then choose the best!’ He is one of those people who does myriad things with interest and enthusiasm, apart from working a second career after his retirement nearly four years ago.

I turn sixty this month, and I paused to reflect how all those around me are moving into these magical years of life. I call them magical because despite the challenges they bring, they also are a time when mostly responsibilities are over, finances are doing alright, and there is life to be lived.

A childhood friend has tied herself to the soul, karma, and cosmic patterns stream of thought. Another friend has embarked on a major fitness program to beat the advances of age. Still another has moved into the religious and ritualistic sphere of life, while another has discovered that social work gives a sense of meaning and purpose to life. Some have moved to farming, while others are traveling extensively. Others are diligently working at second careers. Most of us have now retired from our jobs, and when we meet keep asking each other ‘What are you doing now?’ and always followed by ‘hope all is well on the health front’!

In the six decades that have gone by we have all worked hard, done things, explored and looked for purpose and meaning in what we did. Today, memories of the years gone by is the file that takes up major space in the mindscape. For many like me retirement is to be the time when I would ‘find myself’. Finally, do the things I had never had time to do. The dreams were many – nebulous and unquantifiable. That is what we wish our colleagues who retire all the time – the luxury to spend time doing what you actually love.

‘Finding myself’ was another way of seeking meaning and purpose in life. To somehow understand the grand design and purpose of my existence. See my life gone by and understand the trajectory I had traveled as the preordained or chosen path to take me somewhere that was supposed to be meant for me. When I see the tracks people around me have embarked upon I think I fathom a similar earnest desire. To finally understand, in the magical twilight of life, the meaning and purpose of each of our own individual existences.

Somewhere along the way, maybe around the time COVID struck the world and me, different ideas began to swirl around my head. I looked back at my life as I lay in bed wondering whether I will make it. Isolated and alone, while my family huddled outside. I did make it and my understanding of life underwent a dramatic shift.

Rather than a well planned design, my life story began to look like a succession of random happenings. Try as I could a bigger picture evaded me. The choices I had made along the way provided both moments of ecstasy and agony. I learnt, I grew and my world view expanded. But I could not see any preordained or logical stream of events taking me somewhere. All the events of my life, big and small, seemed random and variable.

To add to my confusion, my innate belief that in the larger scheme of things life has some grand meaning or purpose began to unravel. When your life seems like a random kaleidoscope that changes shapes and colors arbitrarily, and the momentary nature of this existence becomes apparent, then the ideas of meaning and purpose gradually lose steam. It dawned on me that there is no deep hidden meaning in life that I was purposefully moving to discover. Life is, to put it plainly, meaningless and with no preordained purpose. How we fill this space of time given to us is totally in our hands.

It may sound like it made me sad, but the truth is that this realization set me free in a way I had never been in the past decades. Slowly all angst, desperation and anger seemed to recede within me. The awareness of the random nature of life and its inherent meaninglessness became a liberator for me. All pressures within and outside faded away. The need to find reasons for events, prove oneself, keep running and be the best became utterly irrelevant.

Life is meaningless – it is a thought that unfetters the mind completely. And for me it brought a real sense of calm and joy. Life is an experience to be savored in its smallest detail, with no expectation of some hidden meaning or purpose or pattern. Now I absorb everyday, every experience and every happening for the sheer joy of its existence. Both good and bad events are random, so the reaction to them becomes equally so. I don’t have any desire to ‘find myself’ anymore, because I found life.

This does not mean that I have become a hermit or lost interest in life. On the contrary I revel in everything I do. Be it small or big. I still dream of writing my next book soon, traveling the world, spending time with my daughter and living by the sea. Equally I enjoy ‘doing nothing’ at times! Sitting in the garden hearing the birds, leisurely reading the newspaper or watching a show. I have yet to retire, but I do feel that the road that beckons after is peaceful and full of joy.

There are no right or wrong ways to cope with life – any path of dealing with this meaningless, uncertain and arbitrary thing called life is alright. If it helps you navigate it better.

I think I have found my mantra for the rest of my years @60. But who knows, a decade later I might be thinking something radically different.

Thanks to Pujya Priyadarshni https://theatlasbug.wordpress.com/ for being a patient editor of this article…..