The ticking timeline of our lives forces us to find closures to everything. Fixing it. Find a natural end to the problem at hand. An itch waiting to be scratched occupies the headspace like a necessary addition to the course of it. We’ve started treating everything as a problem. Awaiting a solution.

I watched the 3-part series on Bill Gates, aptly titled, ‘Inside Bill’s Mind’ today, where the Microsoft founder is trying to find solutions to world problems. Drainage, Polio and Nuclear power. Occupying his mind, investing his energy and resources and a quest to get a handle on things that matter to him.

It’s interesting that even for a man, who is one of the richest and most influential persons on the planet, the problem expands multidimensionally. Not that there isn’t progress. Efforts do yield results if you work towards it. But there isn’t a finality to it. A definitive closure. One gives way to another. And, Bill isn’t alone in that.

The obscurity of our mind and the ways we try to push it, knock it for answers and command it to find solutions, is insane. Pestering it to dive into uncertain waters to bring us a semblance of a fitting answer is so common that we don’t think twice. We don’t give that poor organ, a break. Even when it tries to give us signs of an abrupt slowdown, by tiring us-our bodies, making us frustrated and irritated at our cores. A break? Naah!

Definitive goals are good. Going after those goals, with all our might, is even better. Keeps us focused and occupied when existentialism winks us as we age.

Achieving it, fixing it, finding an answer or bringing an end is all a finality. Like a sentence awaiting a full stop. Like, the lives we live.

Should our lives be defined by the start and end of our existence? Like, the problems we keep trying to fix? Or the answer we want to find?

Or, let’s make an attempt to live it. To breathe. And pause. Not everything has to be fixed.