Is Finding Your Purpose A Futile Journey?
The endless task of polishing your illusions
Regarding purpose, I find myself in tension between two poles.
My psychology-and-personal-growth-influenced friends love having a life purpose.
They see it as an indicator for personal transformation. To them, purpose marks a transition point.
We outgrew our past stories, reactivity, and bullshit. Now, we actively create a future by the power of declaration.
My friend and teacher Dr. Brad Blanton is a big proponent of purpose work.
He told me all the time:
“Kid, get a new purpose. Your mind will chew on you in the same old ways if you don’t give it some larger context. Realign your energy and the resources you freed up in completion work and put them to some use, ideally benefitting other humans. Therapy ends where activism of some sort begins!”
It does sound good in theory, but there’s a flip side to that.
These days, I study the works of Indian teacher Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj.
In “I am That”, he often makes clear that “living is life’s only purpose.” Maharaj describes mind-made purpose as just more wallpaper for the same old prison of pain and pleasure. To him, all purpose as a separate self is just another illusion that is of limited use for true realisation.
His concerns are not with the persona, but with spiritual enlightenment.
“All happens by itself” and “leave your world alone,” he says.
So is purpose work futile?
Not any more or any less than not doing it.
Jokes aside for now. I guess it depends on who is asking and how you approach it.
From a spiritual standpoint, purpose work does seem kind of unimportant.
All ideas of purpose as a separate self are like hand puppets. The puppet might be new and flashy. But the show remains the same. If we get too attached to the new puppet, we might forget that we are actually running the entire show.
Who we really are is not affected by declaring a new purpose.
Or to quote my second all-time favourite rapper Jay-Z:
“You can try to change, but that’s just the top layer.
Man, you was who you was before you got here.”
In that sense, who we really are underneath is not touched by our doings.
And no words or purpose can really reach that far inside.
So is there any use in having a life purpose?
As a game, maybe.
For most people, a little less surface pain and a little more pleasure seems like a great deal.
So why not play with life whilst giving it different parameters? Use our minds as tools in our service.
This will not lift us over pains and pleasures. It just rearranges the toys on the playground. That’s like updating your computer to play better games with flashier graphics. It’s still a game, but maybe a better game.
Psychologically speaking, playing life with purpose gives us a sense of power, self-determination and choice.
Having a few years of purposeful living is a refreshing thing. Especially if, in the past, we kept a damper on our lives and played the victim. At least it can serve as a healthy plateau, an interim level to find peace and make time for deeper introspection.
And maybe, if we persist in our game long enough, maybe we get tired.
Or like Alan Watts said: “A fool who persists in his folly will eventually become wise.”
Purpose Game Ground-rules
Personally, I like playing with the idea of purpose.
My mind seems more at ease this way. I see purpose as a life jacket that keeps my character afloat in the sea of life.
Here are some ideas I find useful to put purpose work into a playful, non-serious perspective.
Purpose does not make or break me. My core as a human being is not affected by my purpose. My “I am” precedes all purpose. Purpose is a practical, surface-level trick that may or may not help me relax. My happiness does not depend on having a written purpose. It does not depend on things.
Purpose is just something to play with. I don’t have to have a purpose. It’s not a very serious thing. I am aware that playing with purpose will not liberate me from the pains and pleasures of being human. It’s a “choose your illusions” kind of thing.
Purpose is more inner work, than outer. If I see purpose as having to change the outside world, I run against my own projections. Effective purpose work firstly changes the way I see,and then brings change from the inside out.
Purpose frames reality in a different way. Purpose provides a context for my life. It helps me to discriminate and focus my actions. It’s like a coloured pair of glasses I can put on to see things in a certain light. However, life continues if I take off the glasses.
There are more subtleties to explore around this subject, but that’s enough to chew on and digest for now.
Phew, I just got really serious about my purpose of exploring and explaining purpose.
Don’t be gamed by the game
The overarching context we are in is life or existence itself.
Life is the grand container that holds space for all possible purposes. It’s the mother of purpose. If we decide on a new life purpose, we are crafting a sub-container within this larger container. Picture a glass of sparkling bubbly water. Each little bubble soaring to the surface is contained in the water. But the water would be just fine without the bubble.
To the bubble, bubbling is very serious. To the water, it might be a tiny tickle at best, that leaves no trace.
It’s the same with purpose.
All purposes need life as the vessel, but life does not need mind-made concepts of purpose.
Even simpler: No life, no purpose. No purpose, no problem!
I like reminding myself that I am playing a game, and playing it consciously.
If I forget, I might be gamed by the game.
I might lure myself in with a shinier illusion, one that’s harder to see through due to its next-level, upgraded, best-ever shininess, one that’s harder to let go of because of its pleasantness, bombasticness, visionariness, or world-savingness. But it’s still just a game.
So whenever you get serious about building your purpose container, notice the larger container you are already in. Be mindful of the game you are playing. Keep a playful mood going. Living is already a great enough purpose.
P.S.
If you are serious about your purpose, be as serious as possible. Make being serious the purpose. The biggest treat is not in being serious or unserious. It’s inhibiting yourself by thinking you should be any different than you are. Ideally, your purpose just states the obvious and includes characteristics you won’t get rid of anyways. So use them fully and consciously.
Every now and then I run Life Purpose workshops. We get together, state our purposes to one another, feedback honestly to each other, and coach each other on bringing out our best visions for our lives moving forward. They tend to be deeply, seriously playful, and we all come away with a better game to play based on our own personality and situation.