Purposefulness
Let’s leave the discussions about the “MEANING OF LIFE” to the philosophers and the heavy thinkers. What is more significant is your purpose in life. What is it you are doing? What is it you’re supposed to be doing?
It starts in our youth when a well-meaning adult poses the question “So, what do you want to be when you grow up?” You might not have even ridden your first tricycle but already your future occupation or avocation must be decided. Your formative educational life is built around what job or career or profession you intend to follow. For at least the first quarter of your life, your entire focus on your purpose in life is wrapped around just that.
I started out with an interest in journalism before segueing into film-making and screen writing. Having never followed either of those two, I got married and then divorced which put me in a perfect position to be a poet. However, any artistic endeavor might not present itself as to my purpose as a human being. Certainly, it is a compulsion to write and I have discussed that notion both on this blog and in person with a great many people.
Perhaps all of this introspective analysis is coming on the heels of my forthcoming sixtieth birthday and eventually a long-awaited retirement. I wonder if I’ve lived up to my full potential or done what I so longed to do in the dreams of my youth. It is then I realize I commented many many years ago that I would die never having listened to all the music I would wish to hear, never having read all the books I wanted to absorb, never having watched all the movies that intrigue and delight and captivate me.
It is common, I guess, that middle-aged folks yearn for traveling. Then a pandemic and a volatile world situation put the brakes on those notions. How about local or regional traveling? Well, with inflation and the cost of gasoline, even that seems a reach at times.
What AM I doing? What am I SUPPOSED to be doing?
Every so often I come across these words from Ralph Waldo Emerson and things appear to be put into perspective:
“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”
From my own family comes a brief story my late father told. My grandfather, toward the end of his own life, told my father that he was giving him all that he had: a good name.
At times I struggle with how I am supposed to carry myself in the face of conflict, divisiveness, alienation, uncertainty, and artistic passion. Whatever I have may not be much by other’s standards but it was honorably earned and deeply held in earnest. Whatever I don’t have is now but folly.
What I hold onto with profound assurance is a name and reputation that I believe is beyond reproach, held aloft by integrity and sincerity. It is a name I inherited from my father and he from his.
This is my purpose. I hope you find yours.
