What if ‘purpose’ is bullshit?
Anyone you’ve met in the last 10 years, including your quirky great aunt with the giant blue beehive hair, has probably at some point or another talked to you about ‘finding your purpose.’ Millennials and GenZers were taught to believe that they needed to follow their passions (aka find their purpose) in order to be happy. There’s a whole category on Amazon with books like “The Purpose Driven life” and “The power of Purpose” that claim to help readers discover who they were truly meant to be, and what they were truly meant to do. Hell, brands even have purposes now, beyond making products and boatloads of money. And if they don’t, they’re pretty much cancelled.
The idea of “purpose” has become so all-pervasive in our society that not only has it lost its original meaning—one’s intention, or the reason that something exists—but its been so completely hijacked by capitalism and hustle culture that (I believe, anyway) it’s become more of a confinement than a calling.
If we’re all so hell-bent on finding and living our purpose…are we actually living at all? Or are we just stuck on the conveyor belt of striving and proving and defining and being “successful” at whatever we decide that purpose needs to be?
For a long time, I thought I knew my purpose.
In my 20s and early 30s, it was to be a fucking amazing creative. To come up with ideas that changed people’s minds, won awards, and set higher standards. My purpose was to prove to everyone that I was talented, and that I was worthy. Pretty shallow purpose, huh? Then in my mid-late 30s, my purpose changed. I yearned to do work that improved the world, and gave something back. I believed that my new/real purpose was to help causes and organizations that were making a difference…by still coming up with ideas that changed people’s minds, won awards, and set higher standards.
These two purposes got me pretty far in my career. They got me material things, and professional status, and helped my family live comfortably. But they got me absolutely nowhere in my REAL life. My internal life. My me.
Purpose, as it’s been sold to us, is always tied to doing, accomplishing, serving, giving, changing. There’s a metric and an end goal tied to it. We all have our own unique purpose, and it’s our damn responsibility to fulfill it, or else we’re told our lives don’t have meaning. How’s that for some FOMO and shame based motivation?
But what if…what if we don’t each have our own unique purpose? What if each and every one of share the same purpose—just to be who we are? To live? To love? To share? To experience joy and pain? To know that we are enough, and that we are good, and that just by being here, and showing up, and being present? we’re fulfilling everything we need to?
Imagine not having the pressure of living up to some ideal definition of purpose and achievement that cultural norms have dictated for you. How free would you feel to actually start BEING instead of always DOING?
Later this year, I turn 40. And as of right now, anyway, I’m working on believing that I don’t socially-acceptable purpose anymore. There are still things I care deeply about: my family, mental health, equality, spirituality, connection. But none of those are my purpose. I‘m alive to live. To learn. To give and receive love. To be human. To walk through the trees and feel the sun on my face. To enjoy a glass of wine. To be there for my friends when they need me. To be fully myself. To help my help my kids be fully themselves.
So fine, maybe those are purposes in some sense, too. But if that’s the case, then I’m already living them. And all the other bullshit striving, proving, and accomplishing can jump out the window.