purpose

i once went to a local guitar shop and was surprised to see an old friend behind the counter. He seemed at home running the shop, greeting every customer who came in the building with his eccentric charm

“how did you come to work here?” I asked

“well, I’ve always hung out around here, and after awhile, I just started picking up the phones.” he replied. “So, they gave me a job”

breakdown

people pursue long-term endeavors for 3 reasons:

• Passion (acceptance)
  • The state of flow one encounters in engagement
  • The alignment with one’s thought patterns and the subject matter
  • A feeling of vocation and intrinsic purpose derived from pursuing it
• Fear (shame + guilt)
  • Being unable to provide for those you’re responsible for (including yourself)
  • Believing yourself to be unqualified to do “your duty” without pursuing the endeavor
  • Being indiscriminately looked down upon by others without completion of the endeavor
  • FOMO —Missing out on some existentially meaningful experience
• Vanity (pride / honor?)
  • Doubling down on pursuing an endevour to avoid the monotony, dissatisfaction, and inner emptiness of something else (usually, of being an “adult”)
  • Being able to feel intellectually, physically, or even spiritually superior
  • Attaining prestige that will allow one to assert their experiences over others All people are driven by some degree of all these reasons in their long-term actions

Numbers are not healthy

purpose is a desire for something bigger than yourself. Family. Religion. “the Cause” (MAGA, Communism, or any other ideology). For some, purpose is more of an intangible feeling. Happiness. Freedom. Safety.

all these purposes contain irreconcilable unfufillment. Family members die. Religion has contributed to suffering throughout the world. And happiness itself guaranteed to be offset by suffering. When we start to measure that unfufillment, we may begin to see barriers to our various purposes as problems that we ought to shape and control. Wars have been fought over such problems

and yet, when building a resume, most people understand that it’s better to quantify their accomplishments. The What is more important than the How. But bringing this mentality into our lives sets ourselves up for disappointment, and you hear people tell these stories all the time. Your goals are tangible. You achieve them, and there is a honeymoon period. But then that feeling fades and we’re left with another feeling that is just as unsatisfied as the one we were fighting against.

true purpose can only be aligned with love. Love commits itself to what it shows up for unconditionally. Poets and philosophers could explain what that means better than I could so I won’t attempt to try. But I have met many people whose purpose aligned with love and it is easily felt.

It’s easy to feel like, in this seemingly cold, transactional economic system, that we are desired only for our abilities and our merit. But I think in the long run, these things are deceptive. There are indeed many competitive marks to strive for, but I’d argue that many of the abilities and merits needed to meet them are acquired along the way. It’s probably more worth our time to do things out of love than out of fear of not hitting the mark