Your Purpose in Life and Why You Don't Need One
The whole idea of a purpose is to have a guiding light in one's life. What is unstated but implied is leaving a legacy - the proof of accomplishment. This is a fool's game.
Having a purpose in life is overrated. It implies you will eventually get to where you feel you need to go.
Let me be more clear. Having a purpose in life IN THE TRADITIONAL WAY is HIGHLY overrated. What I mean by the traditional way in my view is the sense that we need a goal, a mission, a reason for what we do and how we need to apply ourselves to achieve that “something” that will make us feel successful. Now, of course, we all want to get somewhere. What’s the point if we don’t have something bigger than ourselves that we can subscribe to.
Why I believe this is a trap is because of how “hit or miss” it is. As our life unfolds, and if we don’t accomplish what we feel like we should have accomplished, we can feel disappointed and struggle with a sense of failure.
Here are some general (but very real) examples:
If your purpose is to raise your kids a certain way to have them turn out a certain way and they don’t - are you a failure now?
If your purpose was to change a certain industry, company, political conversation, religious view etc and you don’t - are you a failure now?
If your purpose is to build something and at the end of building it a hurricane, fire, earthquake or some other disaster comes and takes it all away - did you fail?
What is common to the above examples is YOUR EXPECTATIONS of what the end game is. When someone crafts or develops a purpose, there is an implied specific result to be achieved. I know this, I’ve lived life with a purpose, a strong purpose.
So, what is my perspective given that I’ve had these types of things happen to me? It should be put aside. That thinking leads to disillusionment, sometimes actual bitterness, an underlying sense of failure, and ultimately you descend down a road to nowhere - nowhere good. Don’t allow a “purpose” to become the currency of your value, self-worth, self-esteem.
Let’s also look at this in the opposite fashion. If we do have a stated purpose, a stated goal, and if we do accomplish it, if we do arrive at our goal, our “end game” - can it be undone? Usually, the answer is absolutely. Will it be undone? Highly likely.
Also, if you have a purpose will you be remembered for accomplishing it? Most likely not. Very few people are. VERY few. In fact, aside from the very few, you will not be remembered AT ALL by the succeeding generations. Who can name their great-great-great grandfather or mother? Who knows what they did, how they felt, what they felt their purpose was in their lifetime?
Let me give you a personal example. I “restored” 55 acres of Iowa cropland to a certified organic grassland. I started in mid-2000’s and finished in 2018 when we sold the farm and moved. The land was a beautiful, diverse, flourishing example of what could be done with thoughtful and purposeful stewardship. Really - it was so amazing! The return of the birds, wildlife and insects was astounding. However, the next owners rented out the land to conventional crop farmers who broke up all that pasture, bulldozed the woodland, create a large lake, and sprayed the land AGAIN with deadly agricultural chemicals - taking the land right back to where it was before if not in worse shape.
It felt like it would be quite easy to think I wasted all that time. Why do it! Well, if my end game was a legacy of land stewardship, if my sense of self-worth was rooted in an accomplishment in this material world that was lasting, yeah, MAJOR failure.
So, is my personal example a one-off? Does this only happen to a few?
Hardly. It happens to almost everyone at least once in their lifetime, if not many times.
So, am I saying that doing stuff with a sense of purpose is a waste of time?
Read on.
SO, ARE WE SUPPOSED TO JUST LIVE LIFE DAILY IN A RANDOM FASHION LETTING IT ALL HAPPEN TO US?
Living life without a direction, letting life come to you instead of going out to meet “life” is also not advisable. Especially when one is younger, with a lot of energy and drive to accomplish. Accomplishing things is not bad, it’s good. The problem is how we think about our accomplishments and how they can dictate a faulty sense of success.
But even more important is that IT IS CRUCIAL to not just let life just happen but to have something meaningful to connect with. What is meaningful to me would not necessarily be meaningful to you, but no matter what - it needs to be meaningful. In my view however, “meaning” and “purpose” are different. Purpose is a direction towards a more-narrowly focused goal, whereas meaning is the value of what we are doing. Purpose implies doing something great (at least great to us individually), meaning can be found in the smallest of things. Purpose is exclusive as it it implies doing something to the exclusion of other things. Meaning is inclusive in that it can and should include many things. Purpose is narrow, meaning is broad.
Having meaning for one’s life is essential to a good life, a life that is well-lived.
WHAT ABOUT LIVING OUR LIVES FOR SOMEONE ELSE’S PURPOSE?
This is also a trap, and WILL lead to bitterness if you don’t know yourself well. I see this a lot. I see it in religion, I see it in business, I see it in politics. We all want MEANING in our lives, but sometimes feel like who we are and what we are to be doing is not good enough, great enough, worthy enough to do. So, we align ourselves with others who we deem the special ones who have the great purpose that we can subscribe to.
Now, there is nuance to this. If our personal makeup, our characteristics, our personality, our “being” is geared, created and developed to help others with their purpose, and we CONSCIOUSLY understand that who we are and what we are to do is to help make that other person or organization’s purpose or stated goal successful, then that is one thing. A very legit thing, I might add.
But if our alignment with someone else’s purpose is our way of getting something back from that person or organization as a reward for aligning and supporting them - REALLY BAD! Absolutely not good, you WILL be disappointed, disillusioned, angry, blaming and ultimately deeply and irrevocably bitter.
I’ve seen it!
WHAT SHOULD WE BE DOING WITH OUR TIME THEN?
“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why".
~Mark Twain
The Wisdom literature of the world is a great place to start when navigating our direction in life, what we should do with our time, and how we should feel about accomplishment. Without being exhaustive, here are some great excerpts:
Hebrew Scriptures: “He has shown you, o man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”(1) Forget religion - only relate to the wisdom of this. This is not a purpose, this is a DIRECTION for daily living, a way to be and do that is ongoing and timeless. When you are kind to someone, you will feel a deep meaning to your life. You give and you will receive back. If you focus on doing the right thing everyday, whatever the right thing is, there will be a sense of on-going gratification that will supersede any purpose. If you can subscribe to a power bigger and greater than you, to recognize that there is something beyond our human perception, who actually might be watching you and everything you do and think, that is a great thing too! It helps to realize that you might be actually accountable for your actions and your words.
Buddhism: The goal of human life is to seek enlightenment. Life’s purpose is to garner an in-depth understanding of human existence, or as Buddha put it, “see reality as it is”. The Buddhist therefore accomplishes this through meditation involving a right concentration and mindfulness. (2) Seeing reality as it is can’t be overstated enough. Too much of the time, especially in this day and age, irrationality (the setting aside of reality) is the norm, leading to bad choices, wrong perceptions, inadvisable decisions, culminating in bad outcomes.
Islam: Whereas there are many opinions of the purpose for a practicing Muslim, here are a couple of takeaways: Simply put, the purpose of life for God’s creation is to find God and lose oneself in Him (3) Islam seeks to establish an equilibrium between these two aspects of life - the material and the spiritual. It says that everything in the world is for man, but man was created to serve a higher purpose: the establishment of a moral and just order that will fulfill the will of Allah. (4) These are but two opinions of many, but the main takeaway is from a Muslim point of view, this world was created for us, but through the right engagement with the world we are here to serve God and recognize Him as the one true God.
Christianity: As with Islam, the opinions and views of Christians concerning the Christian purpose are many and varied. A few perspective include things such as being like Christ, loving God, spreading the gospel, creating disciples who will do likewise are but a few of the perspectives that Christians have concerning their purpose. Paul tells us that our purpose as a Christian is to be like God in true righteousness and holiness (Ephesians 4:23). Again, religion aside anything —- ANYTHING —— that helps a person determine what a moral and right life is and then encourage the deportment of such a life is a valuable perspective and belief system to adhere to.
Stoicism : living in agreement with nature. More particularly, “the purpose of life is happiness, which is achieved by virtue, living in according to the dictates of reason, ethical and philosophical training, self-reflection, careful judgment and inner calm”. The four qualities of virtue are wisdom, courage, temperance and justice. Whereas the Stoics focused on Nature as the source and not a Divine Being persay, their teachings are a powerful guide for those who reject Divinity but want a path towards happiness and a good life, a life well-lived. The Stoic approach differs in the recognition of what the higher power is, but the practices are very similar to the major religions.
The above is a high level sketch of what the wisdom of sacred texts and philosophy have to say about purpose, our reasons for being here, how to conduct our life, etc. What is most important point I want to make is generally speaking, living a good moral life, recognizing a higher Power, subscribing to the idea of helping your fellow man is a tremendous step forward in living a good life, a life that has MEANING.
THE THOUGHT TO THINK
What gives you meaning? What direction should you be heading towards?
At the end of your life, will you look back, even with all the ups and downs, mistakes made, difficulties encountered, wrongs committed by you to others and by others to you and think you lived well, or did you “miss” your chance.
Right now, I can honestly say I have had a well-lived life. This is what it is meant when it was said of Abraham, David and Job, that they died “full of days”. All three of them experienced deep sorrow, sadness but also joy and fulfillment.
If you can say “my days are full or were full” - you are on the right path. Realize that the PROCESS, the PATH, the JOURNEY is actually the goal, not the goal itself. Especially true when one can, in their lifetime, see the destruction of something worked so hard for.
And more to the point, not only was the purpose the path and the journey, but it was what I BECAME while doing it. THAT’S why I’m pretty against the traditional “purpose in life” that clouds the real focus we should have. Yes, we should have a direction for our lives, we should know who we are and what we are to do, but in that we should not lose the real meaning for our lives and that is to grow and mature in whatever we find ourselves doing. If our stated goal changes, and we understand our true meaning in life is to grow and mature, we won’t feel a sense of failure when things change.
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References:
(1) Micah 6:8
(2) Hines, Jourdan. “The Meaning of Life”. UW Journal of Undergraduate Research XI (2008)
(3) Al Islam https://www.alislam.org/book/quest-of-curious-muslim/what-is-purpose-of-life/
(4) Ahmad, Khurshid. “Islam: Basic Principles and Characteristics ”https://www.iium.edu.my/deed/articles/bpsc.html#:~:text=Islam%20seeks%20to%20establish%20an,fulfill%20the%20will%20of%20Allah.
(5) https://www.zen-tools.net/stoics.html