The Idea Of Our 'Purpose'

Photo by Jukan Tateisi on Unsplash

I was struck by a paragraph in The New York Times “The Morning” briefing today that spoke to the alarming decline in life expectancy in the US in recent years:

“For many, daily life lacks the structure, status and meaning that it once had, as the Princeton University economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton have explained. Many people feel less of a connection to an employer, a labor union, a church or community groups. They are less likely to be married. They are more likely to endure chronic pain and to report being unhappy.”

Now, I’m not going to attempt to unpack that statement in the way it deserves nor can I offer up a simple, snappy solution for it. It’s a massive topic with plenty of root causes and no shortage of differing opinions as to the potential paths forward. (The opinion piece linked above does a good job of speaking to the related issues.)

But I will say that I’m struck by how much that first sentence resonates with so many people, educated or rich or otherwise:

“...daily life lacks the structure, status and meaning that it once had…”

Personally, I think part of the issue is that we’re trained over time to get caught up in races. We cloak this under a desire to achieve and provide, but really, I think we all know that these are labels, and we don’t really step back to consider what’s driving it. 

In most cases, it’s clear: the trappings of status, money and power are intoxicating and, in its pursuit, they become ends in and of themselves. It may not start out this way but often ends up there. And in that process, we lose sight of what it is that we truly want. 

Which is another part of the problem: so much of the time, we don’t make the effort to actually figure out what it is that we do want. What are the guiding principles we want to live by? What are the underlying values that we want to serve? What is the legacy we want to leave behind?

I had lunch with a good friend today and he talked about how he evaluates where he is regularly and how intentional he’s being in living life in alignment with his purpose. That makes so much sense and is so important.

Of course, many of us will argue that we don’t know what our purpose is. Fair enough - so many of us don’t know. But I’m pretty sure we know what it’s not. In addition, I’m not sure any of us know exactly what our specific purpose should be and will be for all eternity. 

I’d suggest that some defined purpose is better than no defined purpose. Some direction gets us somewhere. The point is, I think, to define it as best we can, try it on for a while and then adjust, edit, discard and refine as necessary. 

But to be able to do that requires us to practice living our lives in accordance with that purpose. This means saying NO as much as it means saying YES. It means turning down Dollars in return for time. It means doing things far more intentionally than perhaps we do today.

Again, I’m not suggesting any of this is easy to do, because if it was, we’d have all our problems sorted already. But I do think that the more we aspire - even imperfectly - to find and live by our purpose, the better off we’ll be.