One year ago today, I wrote about whether life had a purpose. While it wasn’t my most popular post, it is probably the most contested and polarizing of all that I’ve written. When I discussed it with others, their responses were wild. They went from “God always has a purpose for us,” to “You’re right, anarchy rules!” The more I’ve thought about this, the more I’ve discovered about my own life’s purpose and the more apparent it has become that a follow up post is long overdue. So let’s take a little time and clarify what your life’s purpose is and how to find it.
Let’s take a few talking points from my last article and clarify them a little bit:
We Do Have a Purpose, Though It’s Not What You Think
A lot of people misunderstood that first article. We do have a purpose to our lives, it just isn’t divinely ordained. We aren’t destined to play some specific role. From my searching, I’ve found that our purpose in life is more akin to game of “this, not that.” Our purpose is to figure out what we will and won’t stand for and we learn to act accordingly. Life is a very long process of experiment, experience and choice. In the time you have, your purpose is to find out who you are and become the best version of that person that you can.
It isn’t about finding your life’s purpose, but finding your life’s message.
Photo by gudmd.haralds
Your life’s message is rooted in your values and values rarely change. Think about all of the things you thought were evil, dishonest and wrong 10 years ago. Chances are good that you still think they’re evil, dishonest and wrong. You still feel a stirring of unease in your emotional senses when you think about those things. Intellectual beliefs change all the time, what you feel in your emotional core is right and wrong will rarely, if ever, change. The message of your life isn’t what you want to do with your time, but what mark you want your actions to leave. What will they say about you and your world?
Life’s Purposes are Vague
I have found that the idea of a specific purpose never seems to work. Who says, “My life’s purpose is to be an accountant!”? Yeah, right. You may love being an accountant, but isn’t their more to you than that? What if you want to read a book on physics instead of accounting? Are you denying your purpose? Using a specific job, or a specific belief, limits where you can go and what you can do with your life. Living from your life’s purpose is like being an artist. You always know what you want to create, but the medium that you choose is an ever evolving process. You may use charcoal, crayons or oil paint, but your creation remains.
You may be a great accountant, but what if one day you decided to try your hand at investment banking? Has your essential message of who you are and what you stand for changed with your job? Probably not. The difference is in the medium you use to express this message.
What Medium Will You Use?
One of my great passions in life is to explore human emotions. I love emotions and I love feeling the ebb and flow of them. I love getting caught up them, like riding a tide into shore. I followed this passion into acting, where I could experience any range of emotions on any given night. I explore my emotions through writing about my personal growth and journaling. I’ve also written novels, screenplays and directed independent films, all just to explore humanity in all our glorious complications. My mediums have changed many times and will continue to change, but my messages never will.
Photo by racoles
Looked at from this angle your life’s purpose become devilishly simple: find what you care about. Discover what your message is. Discover what you want to devote your life to communicating to others. Is it ‘Give Peace a Chance’ or is it ‘Drill, Baby, Drill’? Are you for equal rights, or devoting yourself to deity? It doesn’t have to be a cause, more often than not you’ll find it’s simply a value you hold. Do you believe in fairness? Would you protest against unfairness? Would you devote your life to seeing people treated fairly?
Once you find your message, you may choose any medium to express it. You can be a productive member of society if it fits your message or you can be a mooch. If mooching serves your message, let it be that way. I would argue that, when looked at from this angle, there is no medium that could ever be innately “unpurposeful”. Even killing yourself with drugs sends a message; a message of the importance of freedom to that person and the desire to feel that freedom. It isn’t expressed healthily, but it is expressed.
How to Discover Your Life’s Message:
Last time I told you that to find your life’s purpose you had only to experience your life as it comes to you. That was, I admit, a very flip answer on my part. I still believe it’s a valid answer, but flip nonetheless. To make up for that, here is a method for discovering your life’s message. It is simple, but it isn’t easy. It will take a great deal of time, a great deal of practice and copious amounts of honesty and courage to discover.
Sit quietly and answer these questions:
1. What would you fight for?
2. What would you die for?
How will you know when you’ve found your message? Your message is like falling in love; when you find it, you’ll know. If you have to ask, you haven’t found it yet.
It will take time. For most people it takes years to discover and you may never see the entire message. It will come to you in bits and pieces and will evolve and become clearer as your life unfolds before you. Take it slowly and align yourself with the parts of your message that are clear at this moment. Hold fast to your patience, you will be rewarded with a purposeful and driven life.
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