THE PATH TO PURPOSE: The Journey to a Life of Meaning

The true purpose of life is a life of purpose.  What that statement may lack in originality it more than makes up for in authenticity.  The most enlightened amongst us know this and live it. They know what they want out of life – materially, physically, emotionally and spiritually.  Unfortunately, as is revealed by the pervasiveness of our current societal malaise, these sage individuals and their wisdom appear to be in short supply.  The most obvious misappropriation of our priorities would be in that area we spend the vast majority of our waking hours on this planet, namely, our occupation. And so, let us begin there.

I think it's a tragedy that so many people confess that they are either doing work that they do not believe in or that they feel unconnected to.  In case you feel that I may be overstating this disaffection, we live in a world where such a massive number of people are dissatisfied with their jobs that there are actually businesses in the service of providing “vocational vacations” where people pay hard-earned money to work at another job. One they actually enjoy.  Essentially, these people range from feelings of disillusionment and disconnection to outright disdain for that which consumes a large portion of their short time on this planet.  Prostituting not only your skills, but also the most precious of non-substitutional resources – that is, your time – for something that clearly only provides you with a monetary or material gain, signifies the poorest of valuations.

This provides me with a good opportunity to distinguish between exotelic and autotelic experiences. We embark upon the former for external reasons only; whereas, the latter entail those experiences that are intrinsically rewarding, ends in and of themselves. For far too many of us, it seems that so much of what we do has no value in itself – we do it only because we expect some benefit from it. For those of us that this applies to, the time that we spend at work is essentially just wasted. Instead of being viewed as an avenue for helping you to reach your greater goals, it is seen as being called upon solely to make someone else’s goals – or as is increasingly the case, a corporate entity’s – come to fruition.  In this way, the time that is channelled into such work is usually perceived as being subtracted from the total available for living your life. This is to say that, many people consider their jobs as being something that they have to do – a burden imposed upon them from the outside or an effort that takes life away from the ledger of their existence, rather than adding to it. This is because many of us find ourselves in jobs that do not contribute to our own long-range goals and passions. The dissonance between what we want to do and what we actually do is not only sad but, also, completely unnecessary.

“The deepest personal defeat suffered by human beings is constituted by the difference between what one was capable of becoming and what one has in fact become.” –Ashley Montagu

Be the Master of Your Own Fate

We frequently choose to do things purely for the expected extrinsic benefits, even if it goes against our larger interests.  Doing something merely because you feel you have to is rarely a recipe for happiness or success, and most certainly not when that something is the means for making your livelihood on this Earth.  Now, I do not object to money; I too generally would rather have more than less.  However, there are better ways to attain it than by doing something which provides you with no inherent satisfaction.  Too many of us seem to have lost our passion for life.  Alternatively, if you make your career something that you want to be doing because you know that is it is the right thing for you to do, you will never have to work another day in your life. Your work will be play.  Ultimately, I would auger to bet that the pervasive listlessness that characterizes contemporary society would largely be erased and replaced with a newfound energy if less and less of us were willing to exchange a paycheque for our passion, but instead sought an alliance of the two.

More pointedly, have you ever known anyone working to be happy? In my experience such people have one thing in common: they're not very happy. On the other hand, if you live your life in pursuit of what matters most to you, and you do your work with people whose friendship you value, you will have all the happiness you need. In this sense, happiness is simply a by-product of a life well lived.  An additional benefit is that when you do something that you genuinely feel connected to, your interest and mental focus will bring new energy to the task.  In this way, your work will improve along with the quality of your life; conversely, when work is no more than a means to an end, quality suffers.  For this reason, many people find that when they dismiss the morals of our money culture their passion brings them not only meaning and significance, but greater financial reward as well. Accordingly, I’ve found that the most successful people often aren’t those directly pursuing conventional notions of success; instead, they’re working hard and persisting through difficulties because of their internal motivations and their desire to accomplish something that matters to them.  

The importance of this cannot be overstated.  I'm one of those authenticity seekers and I truly believe that I’m not alone.  People go to work for more than just financial rewards. They go to work to be a part of something.  And those who find inner alignment with their work are able to bring all of themselves to their endeavors.  Equally, someone who finds their work and passion to be at cross-parallels is likely to feel that they are unable to bring their whole selves to the foremost task in their life (if not in importance, then in time spent).  This is a poor use of the limited amount of time that exists in the hourglass of life, and such a misalignment between our true selves and how we devise the hours of our days is unlikely not to manifest additional problems.  For instance, after a while these people often find that they’ve been living so long in the house of mirrors that they begin to mistake the image they were projecting for who they really are.  If my authority in this respect comes across as a bit bullish, it is only because I was once one of them. 

Sure, you are busy. But as Henry Thoreau said: “It is not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is what are you so busy about?”

Live with the Knowledge that Time is An Inelastic Resource

[A brief disclaimer before we move forward: I believe strongly in helping people to challenge their own assumptions. That is, to challenge their beliefs and, when the facts dictate, change them.  While I know men’s lives are not always wholly consistent with their ideals – and, on the aggregate I’m certainly no different in this respect – I am not writing anything here, nor will I moving forward, that I am not prepared to practice or do myself]. 

See I’ve learned firsthand how so very easy it is to get caught up in the thick of thin things, to lose yourself in something because it’s lucrative and carries social approval, rather than because it holds any great meaning to you personally.  The paper chase of law school, which concentrated far more on testing than education, resulted in my becoming great at jumping hoops and meeting targets but terrible at choosing which questions I should be asking or those hurdles that were worth overcoming in the first place. Consequently, the script given advised that the best law students were employed with the biggest corporate law firms. I obediently followed instructions.

I soon found myself surrounded by people who possessed robust resumes and lofty academic credentials; however, and most unfortunately, one doesn’t necessarily learn to be a better person in school. On the whole, they were far more talented than I was or am, and they certainly came from more esteemed backgrounds but they also knew it.  There was a certain carried sense of entitlement and misplaced hubris that gave them an exalted sense of market value that I never did understand.  For the most part, they generally seemed to feel as though the world owed them something far in excess of their service and even in advance of their performance.  I may not have completely comprehended where this entitlement came from exactly but, as a farm-boy from Southern Ontario, I knew that putting the cart before the horse was neither beautiful nor useful. Ultimately, after having worked with and met a great number of corporate lawyers and never finding even one who bore the slightest resemblance to me, I knew I was merely counting the minutes.  My colleagues and I had, so far as I could tell, absolutely nothing in common. To be quite honest, I thought as seriously of being a life-long corporate lawyer as I did about becoming a hippopotamus.  Nonetheless, I persisted, not because I read the office memo and slowly bought into it but on the notion that copping out in order to get my finances to the point that my bank account could no longer be balanced with an abacus was a good idea. Yet, I knew from the countless cups of coffee that I  needed to drink just to get through it that this wasn’t the right decision at that time – but then, life is not always a matter of making the perfect decisions but, rather, a matter of what we take away from the choices that we make.

To that end, life in a corporate law firm taught me some of the most important lessons in my short life. It taught me how easy it is to get caught up in an activity trap, in the busy-ness of life, to work harder and harder at climbing the ladder of success only to discover that it’s leaning against the wrong wall. This is also how I discovered that it’s possible to be busy, very busy, without being particularly effective.  See, I knew I was unhappy with my work but I don’t remember ever stopping to analyze where it all fit in my life’s equation.  To be fair, my days seemed to be fragmented into such short intervals that it precluded any time for meaningful observations or deep reflection - and I don’t think that I’m alone in this respect, I’m inclined to believe that it happens all too often and to far too many. We’re so wrapped up with egotistical things: our career, having enough money, paying the rent, getting a better car, maintaining all the things we already have – we often forget to take the time to ask whether we’re directing our energy in the right places. We don’t get into the habit of standing back and looking at our lives and saying: is this all? Is this what I want? Is something missing?

It was questions like that which eventually got to me. 

I could both see and feel the deep disconnect between my work and my heart.  There was so much more that I had wanted to do with my life. So much more that I had wanted to become.  Without sounding too trite, we all consciously or subconsciously know of the forks in the road of life. We understand that frequently there exists an easy, convenient path and then a harder path to integrity and purpose and that the two are rarely one and the same. We are constantly revealing the substance of our character in how it is that we navigate through these choices. As I know of no other way of making these choices more visible than by walking it myself, it’s at this juncture that I’ll digress from this entry to be followed with one which will embark to you my own intellectual and spiritual journey or, more specifically, of how it is that I learned the humility to run my own race.

Sources:
Anieleski, Mark. "The Economics of Genuine Happiness"
Covey, R. Stephen.  "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People"
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. "Flow"
Pink, H. Daniel. "Drive"
Sharma, Robin. "Who Will Cry When You Die?"
Thoreau, Henry David. "Walden"