What Do I Desire The Most In Life?

What Do I Desire The Most In Life? 

          

            My religion teacher, a good Catholic Nun, asked me once: “Do you eat to live or live to eat?”. That in fact was the fist time in my life I felt that my purpose of living was questioned in a way I could cot excape from answering. I felt the urgeed to come up with a compulsory and convincing philosophy in life. I believe that everyone has to answer such similar existential questions in life at one point or another: ‘What am I doing on earth?’ or ‘What is the point of life?’ or ‘Is there any purpose to life?’

        Religion and spirituality in general deal with the ultimate concerns of people trying to illuminate upon some of the most profound queries of human beings such as the origin of life. As a result, one of the functions of any religious belief system or a spiritual worldview is to provide “an ultimate vision of what people should be striving for in their lives” (Pargament & Park, 1995, p. 15), and the strategies to reach those ends. Accordingly, our concerns, priorities and goals are signature determinants of our overall quality of life.

                One's progression toward and possession of these important life goals become essential for his or her both well-being and positive attitude towards life. At first glance, it might seem odd to speak of religious or spiritual goals in the same way one talks about carrier goals, health goals, and financial goals, etc. Sigmand Freud, Alfred Adler and Carl Jung, three leading psychologists of the 20^thcentury, have different views about man’s striving. Accordingly, in the final analysis, for Freud, ‘people are hungry for love’. While for Adler, 'people are hungry for significance', for Jung, people are hungry for security. 

              However, we speak quite openly as well as increasingly today about one's 'spiritual quest' as an indeapth search into that sacred lieu which fills and satisfies one's 'existential vacuum'. To that extent, one can say that religious or spiritual goals are a person's internal desires towards that which he or she regards as the ultimate and, therefore, is voluntarily committed. In the 1980s and 1990s, when psychology saw an explosion of inventories in the field of religion, spirituality was defined as “a way of being and experiencing that which comes about through awareness of a transcendent dimension and that is characterised by certain identifiable values in regard to self, others, nature, life, and whatever one considers to be Ultimate” (Elkins, 1988, p.10). The multilevel approach to spirituality by Robert A. Emmons assumes that spirituality is multidimensional and is related to people’s subjective experience in distinct, though related, ways.

            So, why do I live for? What is my ultimate purpose in life? What do I desire the most in life? Is it love as Freud says, or significance as Adler says, or security as Jung says? Or, is it radically a different thing altogether, the one who says "I am the Bread of life", as he alone can quenche all quests in life for once and for all.