At dinner tonight my daughter (Jasmine, 6) asked us:
“Why was I born?”
As a guy who writes about Purpose and occasionally has intense crises in which I pose myself similar questions for days on end, I had a guess to share with her:
“Human life is a game and the goal is to answer that question. You get to spend your whole life playing, and the answer gets to spend your whole life changing.”
And yes, folks, that was enough. (surprisingly)
She stared off into space for a while and then started sharing:
(I wish could remember everything she said , but this gives a sense at least)
“
I think I was born to…
Pick up garbage
Help people
Help plants to grow
Eat good plants
Play
Not take more than I need
Not pollute
“
That’s her statement of Purpose.
(As an aside, it’s also an interesting check-in on what she considers her values, which has decent overlap with the values we’re trying to teach her, and probably even more overlap with how we end up spending our time…)
Earlier this week I made a new friend on the phone. We were connected by an old mutual friend (Stu) and spent the first ten minutes of the call singing his praises and telling stories about him.
Tip: That’s a pretty good way to connect with someone. Not just acknowledging the connection but going deep into the love that brought you together. Transitive property of friendship and all that.
Eventually, like my 6-year old, we got to Purpose.
Why are we here?
My four-year foray into executive coaching, during which Purpose came up ALL THE TIME, left me a pragmatist where purpose is concerned.
By pragmatist I mean that unless a belief is clearly false, if I like the consequences of the belief, I should hold it.
Conversely, unless a belief is clearly true, if I don’t like the consequences of it, I shouldn’t hold it.
This is especially relevant for beliefs about ourselves and our future, which tend to have a self-fulfilling nature.
(Unlike beliefs about the future of the weather, global politics, or sports)
So, how you do feel when you don’t believe in Purpose, or don’t feel a sense of Purpose?
I feel:
- lackluster
- tired
- hopeless
- sluggish
- meh
- down
- lazy
- flippant
It’s not quite peeing-on-rugs behavior, but something in that direction.
And how do you feel when do believe in Purpose, or you feel a sense of Purpose?
I feel:
- motivated
- excited
- part of something larger than myself
- aligned
- creative
- possible
- generous
- dynamic
- positive
- like singing
In short: Bob Marley.
Given that, the pragmatist says: Organize your mind-body complex to feel a sense of purpose, dude.
(Of course, there’s more to what we should do than how we feel. Otherwise there would be no difference between a motivated guy bombing a bus and a motivated guy running a soup kitchen.)
What I find interesting is that there seems to be a pretty strong divide between:
traditional religion and purpose on one side
and
modern rationality and the arbitrariness of life on the other
For years every time I looked up books on Purpose, they were all written by an evangelical Christian for another evangelical Christians.
WTF!
What about the rest of us?
That certainly doesn’t seem to bode well for the happiness of the rational folks.
Seems a lot like one of those baby-with-the-bathwater situations to me.
So: Who wants to rescue the baby?
Ankur Shah Delight: Community and Conflict 