The socio-cultural milieu (our homes, relatives, friends, and media) and most importantly our educational system has deeply impregnated within us a MENTAL SETUP of UTILITY & PURPOSE. We have been so thoroughly programmed with the concept of UTILITY & PURPOSE that now it has become our operating system. It is impossible for us to imagine even second of our life being lived without a tag of utility or purpose attached to it. We eat to keep fit (rather fat), we sleep to wake up fresh in the morning to be able to function better throughout the day, we read to get the returns of passing (or good grades), we work to get paid (or promoted or recognized); we socialize to be returned or reciprocated emotionally. Every second of our life is constantly gauged on the scale of purpose and our response calibrated according to its utility value.
An example, a new comer passes by us in the office we register him as a new comer in our MENTAL SETUP our SETUP CATEGORIZES him as low or no utility value to (us) our purpose (purpose of getting promotion or pay hike or recognition etc etc.....) we give him a response linked to low or no utility category that is either ignore him or pass a cold smile. Moments later the chairman of the company arrives and introduces this new comer as the new vice-president of the company and this time around when the same new comer has an eye contact with us we give him back our “smile max” ( electrically exposing all 32 teeth and even the throat), we alter our body attitude and posture into that of shear humility and welcome and all this is done just due to RE-CATEGORIZATION of this new comer now into EXTREMELY IMPORTANT and hence we start responding to him in the EXTREMELY IMPORTANT category linked response.
So this MENTAL SETUP of UTILITY & PURPOSE has made us businessmen. Or more correctly beggars, begging for something in return for everything we do or do not do.
Even before a child can understand he is constantly fed with a purpose (becoming an engineer, doctor, lawyer, billionaire etc...). As he grows the purpose lives through him but he continues to miss life. That is his entire life will now get moulded to achieve this purpose (or goal) given to him. He will stop playing even though he loves to because he has to read more in order to ensure the attainment of his goal. He will never learn to play a flute or a guitar (even though his heart so badly wants to) because that in no way contributes in attainment of his goal & hence is seen as wastage of time by the MENTAL SETUP. During his passage through this dark (time tunnel, time from imparting of goal to its eventual attainment) tunnel of PATH to attainment of his goal he is repeatedly assured of light of HAPPINESS & SETTLEMENT at the other end. He is continuously (&falsely) promised that after attaining his goal his purpose, life will be a beautiful bed of roses and so it is worthwhile to go through any and everything that comes on his way to attain his goal. But after attaining the goal only one thing happens DISILLUSIONMENT which manifests itself as depression of success because the person is so used to living with a goal & a purpose that fulfillment of the same is like drying up (finishing) of fuel of life, now until he is granted another purpose or goal he will lose interest in everything around him since he is not used to living even a second without UTILITY & PURPOSE.
