Rahul Sharma’s finding life purpose journey began, as most Indian children’s existential crises do, with a career counseling session in ninth grade. The counselor, Mrs. Mehta, had asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, and Rahul had made the critical error of answering honestly.
“I don’t know,” he’d said with a shrug.
Mrs. Mehta had looked at him with the kind of concern usually reserved for students who’d just announced plans to join the circus. “Beta, you’re fourteen years old. How can you not know? Your future depends on the decisions you make now.”
Rahul had wanted to point out that fourteen seemed awfully young to determine the entire trajectory of one’s existence, but Mrs. Mehta had already moved on, circling “Undecided/Needs Guidance” on his form with aggressive red pen strokes. That circle would haunt him for the next fifteen years.
The problem, Rahul discovered, was that everyone around him seemed absolutely certain about everything. His best friend Arjun had known since age seven that he wanted to be a doctor, specifically a cardiologist, because his grandfather had one and it seemed prestigious. His other friend Priya was destined for engineering, a path so predetermined that her parents had already selected which IIT she’d attend, they were just waiting for her to actually get in. Even his younger sister Diya, only twelve, had declared with absolute conviction that she’d become a corporate lawyer specializing in international mergers.
Rahul, meanwhile, couldn’t decide what to have for breakfast most mornings, let alone what to do with his entire life. His finding life purpose journey felt like trying to navigate without a map while everyone else had GPS coordinates programmed since birth.
“What about engineering?” his father suggested at dinner one night, in the same tone someone might suggest breathing or drinking water, as if it were simply the obvious choice. “Good prospects, stable career, respectable profession.”
“Or medicine,” his mother added. “Dr. Rahul Sharma. Doesn’t that sound nice?”
“What if I don’t want to be an engineer or a doctor?” Rahul ventured carefully.
The silence that followed was deafening. His parents exchanged the look, the one that said their son had just suggested something deeply troubling, like becoming a professional banana peeler or moving to the moon.
“Then what do you want to do?” his father asked, his voice carefully neutral in a way that suggested the wrong answer would result in a very long lecture.
“I don’t know yet,” Rahul admitted. “Maybe something creative? I like writing stories and making videos.”
His mother actually gasped. “Creative? Beta, creative is what you do as a hobby after you get a real job. You can write stories on weekends after you finish your engineering degree and get placed in a good company.”
This became the family’s official stance on Rahul’s finding life purpose journey: he could discover his purpose, but only after securing a backup plan that happened to be an entire career his parents found acceptable. It was like being told you could follow your dreams, but only if your dreams involved differential equations and coding.
Tenth grade brought the terror of board exams and the sudden expectation that Rahul would declare his stream for eleventh and twelfth. Science with Math was presented as the only real option, the golden ticket to future success. Commerce was acceptable if you absolutely couldn’t handle science. Humanities was mentioned only in hushed, pitying tones, reserved for students who’d “given up” or “didn’t care about their future.”
Rahul chose Science with Math, not because he loved physics or chemistry, but because choosing anything else felt like admitting defeat before the battle even started. His finding life purpose journey could wait; survival was the immediate priority.
Eleventh and twelfth grades passed in a blur of coaching classes, practice tests, and increasingly desperate prayers to gods Rahul wasn’t sure he believed in. He studied engineering entrance exams while his notebooks filled with story ideas and doodles during boring lectures. He memorized organic chemistry reactions while mentally planning YouTube videos he’d never have time to make. He existed in a strange limbo between who he was supposed to become and who he actually was.
The day his entrance exam results arrived, Rahul’s father called a family meeting with the gravity usually reserved for weddings or funerals. Rahul had scored well enough to get into a decent engineering college, not IIT but respectable, and his parents radiated relief like he’d just been rescued from certain doom.
“See? We told you engineering was the right choice,” his mother said, hugging him tightly. “Now your future is secure.”
Rahul wondered if feeling absolutely nothing about your supposedly secure future was normal. Shouldn’t he feel excited? Relieved? Something other than vague dread about four more years of studying subjects that made his brain hurt? But he smiled and accepted congratulations, because that’s what you did when you were still figuring out your finding life purpose journey and everyone around you was certain they’d already solved it for you.
Engineering college was exactly as underwhelming as Rahul had feared. The classes were boring, the curriculum outdated, and the primary extracurricular activity seemed to be collectively complaining about how boring and outdated everything was. Rahul joined the college’s film club, where he finally found people who spoke his language, who got excited about camera angles and storytelling instead of just tolerating it as a distraction from “real” work.
“You’re actually good at this,” his film club president, a final-year student named Karthik, told him after watching Rahul’s first short film. “Like, really good. Have you thought about doing this professionally?”
“My parents would kill me,” Rahul said automatically. “I’m supposed to become a software engineer, get placed in a good company, make them proud.”
Karthik laughed. “And are you going to be happy doing that?”
The question hit Rahul like a truck. Was he going to be happy? The concept of happiness as a legitimate factor in career decisions seemed almost revolutionary. His entire finding life purpose journey had been framed around security, stability, and parental approval. Happiness was what happened coincidentally if you were lucky, not something you actively pursued.
“I don’t know,” Rahul admitted. “I’ve never really thought about it that way.”
“Maybe you should start,” Karthik suggested. “Life’s too short to spend it doing something you hate just because it looks good on paper.”
Third year of engineering brought campus placements, that magical period when companies descended upon colleges to recruit students into their corporate machines. Rahul’s parents began treating placement season like an Olympic event where their son was the star athlete. They called daily for updates, asked about interview preparations, and offered increasingly elaborate prayers to ensure his success.
Rahul got placed at a mid-tier IT company with a decent salary package. His parents threw a party. Relatives congratulated him. His father made a speech about how proud he was that his son had achieved such success. Rahul smiled and thanked everyone while internally screaming, because this success felt like failure, like giving up on his actual finding life purpose journey before it had even really begun.
But what could he do? He had no alternative plan, no safety net, and the thought of disappointing his parents made his stomach hurt. So he accepted the job offer, graduated with his engineering degree, and showed up for his first day of work wearing formal clothes that felt like a costume.
The job was fine. That was the worst part, actually. It wasn’t terrible enough to justify quitting, but it wasn’t fulfilling enough to silence the voice in his head that whispered this isn’t it every single day. Rahul wrote code, attended meetings, participated in team-building exercises, and felt like he was playing a character in someone else’s story. His finding life purpose journey had led him to a comfortable cubicle where he slowly died inside while maintaining excellent attendance.
“You should be happy,” his mother said when he visited home six months into the job. “Good salary, air-conditioned office, respectable position. What more could you want?”
Purpose, Rahul thought but didn’t say. Meaning. A reason to wake up that wasn’t just paying bills and meeting deadlines. But these seemed like luxury concerns, the kind of things people worried about after they’d achieved basic security, not legitimate reasons to upend a perfectly acceptable life.
He lasted two years at that job before the quarter-life crisis hit with the force of a freight train. It happened during a particularly boring meeting about optimization strategies, when Rahul suddenly realized he couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt excited about anything. He’d spent his entire twenties doing what he was supposed to do, following the predetermined path, and he’d somehow ended up exactly where he’d feared: comfortable but hollow.
That night, he did something impulsive. He signed up for a weekend filmmaking workshop, using his own money, not telling his parents because he knew they’d call it a waste of time and resources. The workshop was revelation. For two days, Rahul felt alive in a way he hadn’t since college film club. He collaborated with strangers on creative projects, learned new techniques, and remembered what it felt like to care about something.
“You’ve got a good eye,” the workshop instructor told him. “Have you thought about pursuing this seriously?”
“I have a job,” Rahul said, like that explained everything.
“Jobs are negotiable,” the instructor replied. “Regret isn’t.”
The words stuck with Rahul like a splinter, uncomfortable and impossible to ignore. His finding life purpose journey had been derailed by fear and obligation, but maybe it wasn’t too late to get back on track. Maybe the courage he needed wasn’t to make one giant leap, but to take one small step toward what actually mattered to him.
He started freelancing on weekends, taking small video projects for local businesses and startups. The work was exhausting on top of his regular job, but it felt different, meaningful in a way that code optimization never had. He created a portfolio, built a client base, and slowly, carefully, began believing that maybe his dream wasn’t just a foolish fantasy.
The conversation with his parents happened on a Sunday afternoon when Rahul was twenty-seven years old and finally, finally ready to take control of his finding life purpose journey. He’d rehearsed what to say, prepared responses to their inevitable objections, and steeled himself for disappointment and disapproval.
“I want to quit my job,” he announced over lunch. “I want to start my own video production company.”
The reaction was exactly what he’d expected. His mother looked horrified. His father looked angry. Diya, now a successful lawyer exactly as planned, looked impressed despite herself.
“Have you lost your mind?” his mother demanded. “You have a stable job, a good salary. Why would you throw that away for something so uncertain?”
“Because I’m miserable,” Rahul said simply. “I’ve spent the last decade doing what I thought I should do, what you wanted me to do, and I’m not happy. I need to at least try to do something that matters to me.”
“And if you fail?” his father asked. “Then what? You think companies will rehire you after you’ve wasted years chasing some creative dream?”
“Maybe I’ll fail,” Rahul admitted. “But I’ll definitely fail at being happy if I don’t try. I’ve saved money. I have clients already. I’ve done the research and made a plan. This isn’t a whim; it’s something I’ve been building toward carefully.”
His sister surprised him by speaking up. “Let him try,” Diya said. “I did what you wanted, became what you expected, and I’m successful and miserable too. At least Rahul’s being honest about it.”
The family stared at Diya, the golden child, the one who’d followed the plan perfectly, admitting she wasn’t happy either. It was like watching a carefully constructed narrative collapse in real-time.
“You’re unhappy?” their mother asked Diya, her voice small.
“I’m fine,” Diya said quickly, backtracking slightly. “I just mean, there’s more to life than security and prestige. Maybe we should let people figure out their own paths, even if those paths look different than we imagined.”
The conversation didn’t end with his parents’ blessing, but it ended with reluctant acceptance. They didn’t understand Rahul’s choice, but they agreed not to actively sabotage it, which felt like a victory of sorts. His finding life purpose journey was finally, actually his own.
Quitting his job was terrifying and exhilarating in equal measure. Rahul handed in his resignation, cleared out his cubicle, and walked out of the office for the last time feeling lighter than he had in years. He set up his production company, working from a tiny rented space that cost most of his savings but felt like freedom.
The first year was brutal. Clients were inconsistent, payments were late, and there were definitely moments when Rahul wondered if his parents had been right, if he’d made a catastrophic mistake. But there were also moments of pure joy: finishing a project he was proud of, getting positive feedback from clients, collaborating with other creatives who shared his passion, waking up excited about work instead of dreading it.
His parents slowly, grudgingly came around. His mother started mentioning his “video business” to relatives, the quotation marks audible in her tone but the fact that she mentioned it at all was progress. His father watched some of Rahul’s work and admitted, with obvious difficulty, that it was “quite good, actually.”
The big break came two years into running his company. A major brand approached Rahul about creating a campaign video, a project with a budget that made his eyes water and a timeline that would consume his life for three months. He assembled a team, poured everything he had into the work, and delivered something he knew was the best he’d ever created.
The campaign went viral. Suddenly Rahul’s company wasn’t just surviving; it was thriving. Clients lined up, his team expanded, and opportunities he’d never imagined became reality. More importantly, he was happy. Stressed, yes. Exhausted, definitely. But genuinely, authentically happy in a way he’d never been while collecting a steady paycheck and dying inside.
At a family gathering five years after quitting his engineering job, Rahul’s uncle, who’d been one of his harshest critics when he left corporate life, pulled him aside.
“I owe you an apology,” his uncle said. “When you quit, I thought you were throwing your life away. I told your parents you’d come crawling back within six months.”
“I remember,” Rahul said dryly. “You were very vocal about it.”
His uncle had the grace to look embarrassed. “I was wrong. You’ve built something impressive, something meaningful. More than that, you’re happy. I can see it. Your finding life purpose journey took a different path than anyone expected, but you got there.”
Rahul smiled. “I’m still getting there, actually. I don’t think the journey ever really ends. I just finally figured out that I had to actually be on the journey, not letting other people walk it for me.”
Looking back, Rahul could see how every wrong turn, every moment of confusion and doubt, had been necessary. His finding life purpose journey hadn’t been linear or neat. It had been messy and scary and full of moments when he’d wanted to give up and go back to the safety of expectations and approval. But those struggles had taught him things no classroom or predetermined path ever could have.
He’d learned that purpose wasn’t something you found once and possessed forever. It was something you built, day by day, through choices and actions and the courage to keep going even when the path wasn’t clear. He’d learned that disappointing people who loved you was sometimes necessary to become who you actually were. He’d learned that security and happiness weren’t always the same thing, and choosing happiness required bravery he hadn’t known he possessed.
His sister Diya eventually left law to start a nonprofit working on environmental policy, much to their parents’ renewed shock and dismay. The Sharma siblings had blazed their own trails, messy and unconventional, and their parents had somehow survived the disappointment of having children who chose meaning over safety.
At thirty-two, running a successful production company, mentoring younger filmmakers who reminded him of his confused younger self, Rahul finally felt like he’d found what he’d been searching for since Mrs. Mehta had asked him about his future in ninth grade. Not a destination exactly, but a direction. Not certainty, but clarity about what mattered to him and the courage to pursue it.
His finding life purpose journey had taken him from confused student to miserable engineer to terrified entrepreneur to fulfilled creative professional. It hadn’t been the path anyone predicted or approved of, but it had been his. And in the end, that’s what made it worth every difficult, uncertain, absolutely worthwhile step.
When young filmmakers asked him for advice, struggling with their own finding life purpose journey and family pressure to choose safer paths, Rahul always told them the same thing: “The pressure to know what you want to do with your life at sixteen, or twenty, or even thirty is absurd. You’re allowed to not know. You’re allowed to try things and fail and try other things. You’re allowed to disappoint people while figuring out who you actually are. The only real failure is spending your entire life doing what other people think you should do and never discovering what you actually want.”
It was advice he wished someone had given his fourteen-year-old self, sitting in Mrs. Mehta’s office, panicking about not knowing his future. But maybe he’d needed to walk the whole messy path himself to understand that not knowing was okay, that the journey toward purpose was just as valuable as the destination, and that sometimes the bravest thing you could do was admit you were lost and start walking anyway.
Rahul’s finding life purpose journey had taught him that life wasn’t about having all the answers. It was about asking the right questions, having the courage to pursue honest answers, and accepting that those answers might change as you grew. It was about choosing growth over comfort, authenticity over approval, and your own messy path over someone else’s perfect plan.
And on the days when he still felt uncertain, when new challenges made him question everything again, Rahul reminded himself that this uncertainty was part of the journey too. Purpose wasn’t a destination you reached and stayed at forever. It was a continuous practice of showing up, choosing what mattered, and building a life that felt true even when it looked nothing like what anyone expected.
That was the real finding life purpose journey: not discovering one perfect answer, but learning to live the questions, embrace the uncertainty, and trust yourself enough to keep walking toward what calls to you, even when the path ahead is unclear and everyone around you thinks you’re going the wrong way.
Sometimes, Rahul thought, getting lost was the only way to find yourself. And sometimes the journey towards purpose began the moment you stopped letting other people map it for you.