Is there ONE secret that can end human suffering and lead us toward a joyful, meaningful life?
This one question stayed with me for years.
I wanted a framework that I could use and move on, instead of scouring through a hundred philosophies and systems to “develop” my personality.
I went on reading books related to philosophy, psychology, and those that talked about successful and meaningful lives, trying to find one method that anyone can follow.
After years of this intense exploration, I wrote a book named The Magic of Devotion.
This book is about lifestyle design based on devotion to a deity and creating life around it. This method is something I closely observed during my childhood days—people practiced this method extensively. I practiced it for years too, and I know the benefits of it.
But once I completed writing this book, it didn’t feel like the ONE method I was looking for. It didn’t feel like it came from within—first you need to understand it, practice it, and make it a systematic ritual every day. That’s not something most human beings naturally gravitate toward. It doesn’t come naturally to them.
So, what is it that is innately built into us—something that’s natural and common for everyone?
Something like your breathing: it starts the day you’re born and lives with you until your last breath.
It’s not something you practice to own it, but something that comes from within as a call, a nudge, sometimes a hard push.
The Call We’ve Stopped Hearing
Do you know how Franz Kafka wrote his classics?
He had a day job. So he waited until everyone slept, then started writing until midnight. He reserved that time for himself—to answer that deeper call.
That deeper call that each and every one of us has: It’s an intense desire to ACT.
This call to action is something children answer to every day. They run out of their houses to do something—trying to ride their father’s large bicycle, crafting a paper boat and letting it float over a stream, or building that sand castle.
To do something they don’t intellectually know why they’re doing. Just for the pleasure of doing it, losing themselves in the act, seeing it completed. To turn their raw potential into something concrete.
But as adults, we keep pushing those calls away. Maybe because we think it’s not more important than other things at hand, or we believe we can do it tomorrow. But that tomorrow never comes.
In recent years, I found a big reason for this adult behavior.
The Yin Yang Paradox
We have divided our lives into two halves, like the yin-yang symbol—the lighter part and the darker part.
- The light half is personal life: family, friends, joy.
- The dark half is work life: toil, struggle, something we endure.
Have you thought about it?
We treat our professional lives as a burden we must bear to earn the light half. We’ve accepted this framework so completely that society and media reinforce this compartmentalization of life constantly—work life and personal life. It has made work a means to an end, rather than an end in itself.
I’ve been questioning this division for some time now. What if the dark half wasn’t really dark at all? What if the work we’re called to do—the thing that keeps us awake at night like Kafka—is actually where the light lives?
Have you observed this: that the dark part of your life, your work life, is what gives light to your personal life?
Imagine you lose your job one day or your business fails. What happens to your personal life? It becomes darker.
This clearly implies that your work was not a burden; you made it a burden because you weren’t supplying it the right energy—the energy that comes from inside.
Why do people like Franz Kafka use late night to write when they could have used the time for a good sleep?
This desire to immerse oneself in the work comes from within. It looks like it’s for money, fame or for the eyes of others. Of course, they want those things, but this desire is deeper, more fundamental.
It’s something your body, mind, and heart crave. It’s something that balances your being, something that rejuvenates you from the inside.
So, do you have an idea that’s been pushing you for a while?
Start Building
Write the idea down today. Just that. Your mind begins to move around it. Tomorrow you add more. The domino effect begins.
That becomes your meditation.