I’ve done it!

I’ve discovered the purpose to life!

After pondering over The Question for years and years, I’ve finally figured it out!

Yes, it requires three exclamation marks, because that’s how I feel at this moment. Great! Stream of conscious-like! Free to feel!

Okay. So the revelation was brought on by three momentous events, one in succession of the other over the span of three days. I have just linked the three in my brain and discovered the epiphany a second ago.

First event: last Saturday, after a tiring day at work, I went over to my friend’s house around midnight to talk and rewind. We started off with surface chatting and somehow got to the deeper stuff. And stayed there. In fact, drowned in its depth.

She believes life has no purpose. Optimism was putting on rose-tinted glasses. Reality random. I respect her views. In fact, I can see them in the wee corner of my own mind but have always been too scared to let the idea out.

But are rose-tinted glasses bad? I put them on to prevent myself from shriveling under reality’s negative radiations. I’m no Don Quixote; I know reality. The glasses are only dangerous for people who don’t even know they have them on.

I chose them. Because living life in color is so much more fun than mere black and white. Rose is my color of interpretation, because subjectivity offers the poignancy of imagination that objectivity never provided.

Second event: Sunday night, I watched the movie Dead Poets Society. It’s officially going on my list of ‘deep, influential, and inspirational’ movies of all time. The plot revolves around a group of fun-suppressed prep school boys living in the conforming era of the 50s and their revelation of the joys of carpe diem (Latin for seize the day) and rebellion. All of them break out from their planned lives of school, med school, law school, and pursue girls, passions, poetry, and whims. They become Freethinkers. Feelers. Idealists.

I felt great after the movie, carpe diem flowing in my blood as I started pondering over what my ultimate Passion was.

But I couldn’t find any. The people in the movie had passions for teaching, for acting, for poetry. Passion is such a strong word, in fact, the most potent word in the English language. However, I couldn’t find a thing that I was truly passionate about.

This lack of an ultimate Passion bugged me the whole Monday. I thought of my friends: passion for money, passion for art, passion for music, these things drive their actions, their behaviors, their lives. But I, I like a lot of things, I love a selected few, but Passion? The passion for a driving essence to the purpose of life was missing in me.

Third event: Remember Bus Boy I met back in the Metro-riding days of summer? Well, I still keep in contact with him via email. He is a deep thinker who sees the world through an artist’s eyes.

One time, he described the utter perfection of beauty in a clear glass of half-filled (or half-empty depending on the way you look at it) water. The way the sun rays played off the surface glass to create tiny rainbows. The invisible undulations of water vibration. The blurred lip stains at the edge. The transparent beauty of such a simple object.

At that moment, he felt time stop, suspended in its pendulous path as every inch of his being was focused on the utter beauty of the sight.

Well, anyway, we always muse over The Question but never arrive at an answer. In an email back to him, I related the events of the deep chat with my friend and the movie, and right there, as I was typing about how bummed I was about not finding a Passion, it hit me.

My passion is to just live! Experience Life! Explore and learn! About people, about places, ideas, and cultures. Drink Coffee. Sunbathe. Buy new nail polish. Talk with friends.

Cook breakfast. Text message. Rock, classical, reggaetÛn, Big Band. Mixing it up. Goofing around. Telling jokes. Love. The first time of everything.

No driving passion defines my path except for my inherent curiosity of the world. My passion is the conglomeration of all the subtle nuances of life, the small mosaic tiles that make up a kaleidoscope. And these tiles unite in their strength; they form my true passion and a sturdy road to walk on.

And to have more questions than answers actually feels liberating! Like I can be swept by the exciting mystery currents through uncharted waters, going whichever way life leads me.

Then suddenly everything made sense. My desire to see the world in color, to cage the cynic, the skeptic, the pessimist in a wee corner of my brain. The impact of Carpe Diem and abandoning myself to true emotions instead of manipulating with cold logic. The reason I hate to analyze the Big Questions, because in the mean time, I loose the chance to feel.