Once, long ago, when I was young, fresh and unspoiled, I wanted to be a model child. Please my parents, be a source of pride and joy to them. They were the reference for my naïve philosophy of life. Then, childhood idealism dissolved into angry adolescence. I rebelled to assert my individuality, and the fight itself became my new anchor. Not soon after, I experienced the warm comforts of being a traditional rule-abiding member of my community. Society approved that I fell in line, it loved me for my worldly successes. Its validation was so intoxicating that it seemed I had finally found the anchor which I could tie my whole life around. Sadly, I was too free-spirited to sustain a long relationship with tradition, and when I upset the apple cart, society promptly withdrew its love. But by then I had tasted the thrill of novelty, of the freedom of adventure. I now hated the comforts of approval I had once made my life’s cornerstone.

Another breakup, another ideal lost. Another anchor drowned.

Adventure and novelty in themselves were intoxicating enough to last me years until the lack of meaning punctured it. And then one day, its charm was gone, vanished altogether. It was as if a framework for life worked for some time, and then it failed. Nothing made sense, old frameworks exploded and new ones rushed to fill the vacuum. As if I was trying on clothes and tearing them off, bright-eyed and expectant at first, but discontent soon. Hankering for that best fit.

At one time I was convinced life was a strict balance sheet of successes and failures, that there was an invisible scoreboard somewhere, on which I marked off my points against others with obsessive precision. Then, suddenly I became certain nothing mattered at all and I dropped everything in a moment. I hibernated in emptiness, convinced of life’s nihilism. Soon after, another moment of epiphany arrived, with as much hope as all the ones before, when someone told me happiness and suffering was cyclical, according to a holy book they had read. I immediately observed it reflecting all too well in my life, and this hint of a ‘system’ turned me religious with fervour. There had to be a framework for my suffering, and for my happiness, which was so elusive and temporary. I pored over scripture in my quest for an anchor, I gave serious thought, for the first time, to the entity of ‘God’. I prayed, I chanted. I behaved well too, often, as a new fear of sinning and displeasing this God invaded my thoughts.

I am not fickle, no. Not impulsive and impatient. None of those things.

It was just that even this framework was as ill-defined and dissatisfying as others, and very soon after, it crumbled. I soon hated this ‘GOD ‘ with a deeper fervour than when I accepted him as a new reference for life. My fear morphed into a sulky, defiant rebellion against a God who did not follow my rules of good and bad. One who did not respond to my rituals and worship. I became an atheist, sulking angrily under the garb of logic and rationality.

Rationality in itself means nothing, it is a means to an end. What could that be? How would I lead life, guided by the atheist logic?

Fortunately for me, I thought then, I hit upon the ultimate solution advised for happiness. Service, they say.  Take care of the world’s well being, lessen their suffering, comfort them. I tried to feed the poor then, house the homeless. Not soon after, I came face to face with another existential absurdity. Another epiphany, another moment of realisation. Was comfort truly the antithesis, the opposite of suffering? Was comfort happiness?

Had it been for me? When I had discarded one life philosophy after another, in search of comfort from suffering. No, comfort was not happiness. Not in the long term, anyway. There was something more.

It set me thinking then: What did well – being really mean? Two grateful square meals a day could be acute poverty for another. How could I decide then?

Ok, if I could not define another’s well being, could I at least define mine? What did it mean to me? What would make me truly happy?

I did not know.

Soon this existential hammering deepened its intensity, it would not leave me alone now. I was possessed. I could not let it slide.

What was the meaning of my life? How should I lead it? Did my life have a purpose?

I had had enough of amorphous, ill-defined, wishy-washy answers. I craved structure, a method. I urged for a system, a sensible framework. I wanted logic. I turned to Science and heard what the scientists had to say. I searched high and low, I dived deep into vibrating foundations of string theory and hunted for the fundamentals of life in genetics. There had to be a clue, somewhere. About how to live my life.

I needed a fixed point of reference. Something unchanging.

I heard the accomplished Sean Carroll; esteemed physicist, eloquent science populariser and my personal hero say something that struck a raw nerve. It haunted me for a long time and set me off on a path unimagined by regular intuition.

This is what he said, though not verbatim- “Finding the meaning and purpose of life, or even morality is a creative and aesthetic exercise. As if you were playing a game of chess. You create your own game with your own rules. A game which is not arbitrary yet is not real.”

Really? Is that all you have to say? Decades of relentless pounding dismissed by a simple explanation! Like a game. Make your own rules.

Why had I not figured out the game then? Why was I not happy? Why are the billions not happy?

No. Something was not right. Tell me, why can’t life be scientific? With a set of first principles. A few, well-defined variables. Why can’t life have a definite goal? Why no instruments and carefully outlined methods for experimentation and analysis?

Don’t you want it to be like that?

I do.

Why isn’t there a deep, elegant theory for life? One that is predictive. Why can’t free will have an equation? Why can’t we draw our moral code on a graph? Why can’t there be an algorithm for emotions?

Don’t you want it? A model for life?

I do.

Most troublingly, why can’t life have universality and consistency? Why must life be relative? Should it be this way?