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Who Picked This Life for Me?

Who Picked This Life for Me?

I have been an extremist for as long as I can remember.

When I say extremist, I do not mean it in a political sense. I mean it as a fundamental way of living my life. To me, life is binary: either you believe in something one hundred percent, or you do not care about it at all. There is no middle ground in my perspective. I have always felt that "tolerance" is a misunderstood word. Being tolerant does not mean you are ignorant; it just means you believe so strongly in your own path that you simply care less about the logic of others.

Because of this mindset, I have spent most of my life avoiding small, inconsequential choices. Most decisions felt empty and held no real importance to me, so I simply let the world decide on my behalf.

The Default Settings

This indifference is exactly how I ended up in the field of Engineering. When it was time to choose a path for my university studies, I did not have a "passion" or a specific "dream" to follow. My parents believed I was good at mathematics and science, and I had heard that people with those strengths should naturally opt for engineering. I did not disagree with them, but I also did not care enough to agree. Today, I tell people I chose Computer Science because I have liked programming since the eighth grade, but that is only half the truth.

The full truth is that Engineering was just a collection of other people's thoughts that I decided to go along with. It did not matter to me then, and honestly, it does not matter to me now. My career was a "default setting" I inherited from the environment around me.

Even my first job is a result of this same passive approach. It was provided by the efforts and guidance of my roommates; otherwise, I would not have cared enough to prepare for an interview on my own. I feel the same way about my connection to Jainism. I follow the tradition simply because I was born into a Jain family. There is no deliberate, personal reason why I will follow any religion at all. From my perspective, most organized religions feel equally bloated :)

The Hidden Choices

However, looking back at my history, I realize I have actually been making personal choices my entire life without knowing why. For example, becoming an extremist was a choice I made entirely on my own. I cannot come up with a clear argument in favor of being an extremist, but I made that choice anyway, even before I truly understood what the word meant.

In the eighth grade, I also made the deliberate choice to become an introvert. It was not a temporary phase or a reaction to a bad day; it was a decision to set my personality in a specific way. I had no clear reason for this change, but I stuck to it with the same intensity I apply to everything else.

Even my hobbies follow this pattern. I do not try new things because I am curious or seeking entertainment. I have certain ways of organizing my day that are non-negotiable. If someone were to ask me why I must do things in a specific order, I would have no logical answer to give them. It is simply an internal requirement that my mind has no power to change. Throughout my life, these random choices would appear in my head, and I would follow them blindly. I never stopped to ask where these commands were coming from.

The Glitch

Things changed last year, 2025, around the time of Samvatsari.

During a conversation, I was asked a question about a specific personal habit I had recently started following. It was a rule I had set for myself that did not seem to have any clear purpose or logical benefit. When I was asked "Why?", I realized I did not have a real answer. My mind had no clear goal that was being achieved by this choice. I was not even very serious about the belief behind it at the time; it was just a random rule I had picked up and followed completely.

This time, however, I decided to stop and find the logic behind my choice. I realized there was a gap in my own story. I was following a strict rule that I had not consciously written or agreed to.

The Hardware, Operating System, and Applications

After thinking about this for several days, I believe my life functions as three distinct parts: my Body, my Mind, and my Soul.

The Body is like the hardware of a computer. It takes care of itself to ensure survival, handling things like breathing and basic instincts on its own. You do not "choose" to breathe or keep your heart beating; the hardware handles it automatically.

The Mind is like a collection of applications running on top of that hardware. These applications are driven by morality and logic - the things we learn, like speaking, social rules, or solving problems. Most of the time these applications run the show and make the daily decisions. These are the decisions I can argue about.

The Soul, however, is like the Operating System. It is the final authority of the entire system. Under normal conditions, the Operating System stays in the background, but the moment it wants something to be done, it takes full control.

I think that these strange, unexplained choices - like my introversion or my strict daily habits - did not come from the "applications" / my mind. They were directives sent straight from the Operating System. My soul wanted something done, so it overrode my logic. This was my first glimpse of what I consider free-will. I decide to do something, not because it is backed by a logical argument, but simply because the core of my being wants to.

A Newer Perspective

The curiosity to understand these unexplained choices led me down a path of exploring philosophy more deeply. I wanted to understand the Soul that was making these silent decisions for me. This search eventually brought me to an interesting concept of Jati Smaran Gyan in Jainism - the idea of accessing memories that exist beyond our current life. To me, this is no longer just a mystical story; it is one possible explanation for where my unexplained decisions actually come from.

The story of King Shreyans Kumar is a nice example of how this works. In the current cosmic cycle, Rishabhanath was the first Tirthankar to renounce his kingdom and become a monk. Because the world had forgotten the proper way to offer alms to a monk, Rishabhanath went without food or water for four hundred days. When He arrived in the city of Hastinapur, King Shreyans Kumar looked at Him and suddenly experienced Jati Smaran.

In that moment, the King recalled the sacred ritual of offering alms. His mind in that life had no knowledge of the process, but his soul carried the experience. Because of this sudden memory, he was able to offer sugarcane juice to Rishabhanath. This marked the first time a fast was broken and established the tradition of alms-giving for the rest of this era.

TLDR; It turns out the Soul does not fancy talking very often. I am waiting for it to take charge again, hoping it will do so when required. I am writing this because my Mind is tired of keeping track. I am not looking for "peace" or some spiritual enlightenment; I am just trying to understand these unexplainable thoughts...