So I was reading this book by John Mackey, the founder of Whole Foods . . . “Conscious Capitalism.” Very interesting stuff, I recommend it. It very much mirrors a lot of what I talk about in “Getting in Touch with Your Inner Rich Kid,” in terms of questioning the standard ways we define and view wealth. There is one paragraph in particular, where he talks about job, careers, and purpose, that really struck me.
There is an old saying: the two most important days of your life are the day you are born, and the day you discover the reason why you were born.
I must confess to you, I don’t think I have ever in my life sat down and really tried to figure out what my purpose is. I have been so busy trying to stay alive I guess I never had the time, or, as a poor kid, ever thought I had permission to think of myself in such lofty ways. So today I start.
It’s hard to focus on purpose when we get so easily panicked over lesser priorities. I was playing with comical ideas of people whose lives get totally steamrolled by such things: “Here lies Bob, he paid all his bills on time.” “Here lies Susan, she was never late to a meeting.”
We get easily distracted by all the fear and anger we sense in other people, sometimes so much so we never get past the endless task of trying to address or appease it, and never have time to think about our highest purpose. This leads us to my ongoing theme of getting calm command of your life back. I guess that is one of my purposes in life.
As I look back on it, my initial purpose in life was to make my mother happy. I worked hard at that, although it was not a conscious, or logical, decision to do so. Then for many years I seemed to be concerned mostly with just surviving while trying to heal myself. That is a never-ending process, but it is no longer qualifies as a highest “purpose.”
I have realized that a lot of my thinking re: goals and purposes have been very limited; again, this was my “poor kid” training at work, telling me to seek success by lowering expectations . . . I think a lot about trips I would like to take, and recognition I would like to get, but this is all secondary to the task of fulfilling my purpose in life. And while I have lots of activities that might qualify, nothing really stands out as a clear answer.
Last night I gave my subconscious mind the assignment of telling me what my purpose is. I slept poorly, a lot of weird dreams about being reborn, but woke up with no definitive answer.
I did come up with an interesting new way of looking at life though. Whenever I get annoyed with another driver on the road, or I wonder how I am going to pay this or that bill, I then ask the question, should I even be spending time thinking about such things, when I am not yet clear on my ultimate purpose in life? Shouldn’t I focus all resources on that larger question, because if I succeed at it, won’t that pretty much solve all these lesser picayune problems?
Have you found your purpose in life? Are you still trying to figure it out? Have you ever even thought about it? Are you, like so many of us, easily distracted by all the fires of life that continually need to be put out? Feel free to add to the discussion.
© Justin Locke
