INSIGHTS ON LIFE

Are We On Earth On A Mission?

Have you not understood yet the above question? It is one of the related questions philosophers and theologians have had to grapple with through the years as they sat upon the big question of why we are here on this Earth. Predestination, the concept that every human has been destined on earth to live a certain life out of which he or she cannot step, is the idea shared by some of the world's religions and those who follow them. Self-determination, the concept that every human determines his or her life through freewill, is a more reasonable concept of human life, shared by the sages, mystics, and spiritual people around the world. These two terms are misunderstood and only one has truth in it.

Permit me to ask you these questions. Are you destined to the life you are now living? Could you live anyway other than the life you are living? Is the doctor destined to be so and nothing else? Is the unrepentant thief destined to be so and not a doctor? Are children who were murdered in wars, who were born malformed, and who are dying of hunger destined to be so? Did God write your life in a book how you are going to live the days of your life?

The concept of predestination is ill-conceived and even Bible passages used to explain it are not understood themselves. In the Bible, for instance, only the leaders of the people have the hand of predestination upon them. Ordinary people lived ordinarily. That shows that these leaders had the interest of their god from birth for the purpose of performing duties for the god.

No man or woman is predestined except such a person is a "programmed human being" destined to live out a life-script for certain supranatural powers who "own" such individual. Even such life-scripted human can step out of his or her programme and fashion a life.

Generally, humans are not factory robots predestined without power of self-determination. We exist because we are. We is. We be. We are here because Life is. We are the life. We are expressions of The Life. We are, because Life is. Life is a complex thing. It is powerful, intelligent, creative, both physical and spiritual, and it is eternally conscious and enduring. We are all of this, flowing with Life through space and time in an infinite field of being.

Humans are in life to be. If becoming is our mission, then it is right that we are on a mission. But, if you say that we are here to be this and that so that we can do this and that, by predestination, then I should tell you with all sincerity that you need a reorientation. We are here to BECOME. In that becoming, we unfold the life-endowed creative abilities within us to further Life and to self-realize. You can decide to be nothing and do nothing, and life will not judge you for it. The truth however is that you will be like a seed which decides not to grow into a tree, or a flower, or whatever is in the seed.

There is one predestination existing in the whole universe and the totality of it is in the one word "Live". Live. Be. Exist. Become. Grow. Flourish. Actualize. Realize. Be immortal. Be divine. Be everything good and progressive. Be forward. Go upward. Be you. Be complete. Be life. In death, be life.

For the health of your being, it will do you good to reeducate yourself from the misconception that you are on a mission to perform special functions on Earth. Except you are in the league of supranatural beings coming and going out of Earth, you are just a being like other beings having a human experience on this Earth. In living your life, you give yourself a purpose and set out on the mission to realize such purpose. When your body becomes too weak to hold you, it becomes time to discard the body and stand before The Life to know if you are continuing in the beyond or will take a brief rest before reincarnating onto this Earth or some other material planet in the distant galaxies.

Victor Negro is based in Lagos. He writes on matters of life and existence as he thinks, preferring better understanding of common questions.