Send to KindleI’ve seen a lot of advice on the net lately that promises to help you find your purpose in life. Usually such help comes wrapped in cutting-edge click-bait and SEO trends:
Five tips for finding your purpose! This person found their purpose and what happened next you won’t believe!
I wanted to provide some assistance on this quest for purpose. Sure you can ask Google, but Google’s dirty secret is you can ask Google anything, but you don’t always get a decent answer. So unless your life purpose is reading 497,263,158 results delivered in 0.9 seconds, you’ll have to look elsewhere. Google doesn’t have the answer.
That squeaking sound was all of Nerd Nation gasping in horror. Sorry, nerds. Someone had to say it.
I’m skeptical of “one size fits all” approaches. That approach doesn’t work for underwear so it follows logically that it won’t work for life
What bugs me most about the “find your purpose” articles is that they promise something I doubt they can deliver. In fact, I wonder if anyone at all can deliver it, even you finding it for yourself. I wonder if finding a purpose is difficult because it can’t be found. Ever. By anyone. To me, a “purpose-quest” smells very un-Zen.
I’ve always been skeptical of anything that makes you say “This is what I am going to do for the rest of my life.” That might explain why my college career was a disaster. Of course, a strong tendency to daydream probably didn’t help. Some people are driven and they know what they want to do, that’s great. For them.
However, I’m skeptical of “one size fits all” approaches, in any field or across any dimension, space or time. “One size fits all” doesn’t work for underwear so it follows logically it won’t work for life. What’s that? Yes it does follow logically! We’re all vastly different, practically aliens to each other. We’re not even the same person we were ten years ago, and we won’t be the same person we are now in ten years. Are you going to wear the same underwear ten years from now? (Correct answer: No.)
Our human brains are awesome because they see the world around us as a giant array of tools, things to be used to bring our will into reality. If something doesn’t have a clear purpose, we are confused and neglect it or dislike it. Seeing the world this way is a blessing and a curse. Dang it, can’t something be just a blessing for once? Ah well.
Let’s look at a herd of zebras stampeding, or starling murmurations. As we watch this majestic movement, we think, “That is so cool, so amazing. So beautiful.” But pull one of those birds out of that flock and ask him, “So what’s your purpose? Your reason for living?” The bird would say, “I dunno brah, to get through the day alive? Have some fun, sing a song, get some good eatin’, maybe mate. Chill.”
Thank you for making my point, bird who sounds vaguely like a surfer-dude prototype.
The point? It’s that we watch these birds flying, we watch zebras stampeding, and other acts of nature and we rightly label them amazing, beautiful, etc. Yet if zebras had a human need for purpose, their Facebook timelines would be filled with an endless string of “I hate Mondays” statuses post-stampede. When you see other animals just doing their normal daily thing you think it’s amazing. So why can’t we human animals also be amazing just by being?
So maybe you need a purpose, maybe you want one. As explained above in my daring underwear-is-like-life analogy, one size doesn’t fit all. But I’m here to humbly suggest that when someone offers to tell you your purpose, consider if you even want or need one. There’s no law that says you need one. It’s not immoral to lack one. In fact, more of our human herd might feel a bit more relaxed if we didn’t try to find one.
This item was originally posted on www.LarryNocella.com.