Striving Towards Excellence

-Karthik Gurumurthy

I catch myself doing this all the time—wondering what the point of everything is, waiting for some cosmic revelation about what life means. It’s like I’m expecting someone to tap me on the shoulder and say, “Hey, here’s your purpose, here’s what it’s all about, now get to work.”

But what if I’ve been looking at this completely backward?

What if no one’s coming to explain the meaning of life to me because I’m supposed to create it myself? What if waiting for external answers is just a way of avoiding the responsibility—and the freedom—of deciding what matters to me?

I’ve realized I spend way too much time looking outside myself for validation, direction, and meaning. Waiting for the right opportunity, the perfect mentor, the clear sign that tells me what I should be doing with my life. But maybe that’s missing the entire point.

What if the meaning isn’t something I discover but something I create? What if I’m not here to find my purpose but to decide what my purpose is going to be?

This is both terrifying and liberating. Terrifying because it means I can’t blame anyone else if my life feels meaningless—that’s on me. But liberating because it means I get to choose. I get to decide what’s worth caring about, what’s worth working toward, what makes this short time meaningful.

I think about it like this: I’ve been sitting in the audience of my own life, waiting for something interesting to happen on stage. But the stage is empty because I’m supposed to be the one performing. I’m the director, the writer, the main character. The show doesn’t start until I decide what story I want to tell.

This doesn’t mean I have to figure it all out at once or that there’s only one right way to create meaning. It just means I stop waiting for permission or perfect clarity and start making choices based on what feels important to me right now.

Maybe meaning isn’t something that gets revealed to us—maybe it’s something we build, day by day, choice by choice. Maybe the point isn’t to find the answer but to keep choosing what kind of story we want our life to tell.

The stage is empty and waiting. The script is blank. That’s not a problem to solve—it’s an invitation to create something that matters to me.

Time to stop waiting in the audience and start writing the play.