314. Purpose = Freedom

Purpose = Freedom By Steve Pavlina It’s fair to say that if you don’t know your purpose in life, you won’t be spending much time working on it. So what will you end up doing with your working time instead? Three things: 1) Working on your needs, 2) Working on other people needs, 3) Working on other people’s purposes. If you don’t know your purpose, the limit of the work you do for yourself will be stuck at the level of need, which at best has the potential to grow into greed. Not particularly fulfilling spending your whole working life this way… Try it yourself for a few decades if you don’t believe me, and then look at the passionless shell that stares back at you from your mirror. As you work with/for other people, most likely you’ll be putting lots of effort into satisfying other people’s needs and greeds: your boss, your customers, your company’s investors, etc. Even in your free time, you’ll be working to fulfill the desires of advertisers who want you to watch TV and buy stuff. Again, not particularly satisfying, although you may be thrown a few bones by your benefactors, such as the “gift” of working on some interesting projects. This kind of life will ultimately make you want to stand up and shout, “What exactly is the point of all of this?” But if you actually do that, you’ll only get blank stares in return. There is no point. Now if you’re very lucky, you may get the chance to work for someone or some organization which is itself focused on achieving a conscious purpose. However, there’s no telling what that purpose might be. If you don’t know your own purpose, you can’t consciously choose to work for someone whose purpose aligns with yours except by accident or chance, and the odds of alignment are low. So there’s a good chance you’ll be working hard to achieve a purpose you don’t agree with. For example, if you join the military, you may be put to use to achieve some big purpose, but what exactly will it be? Most likely, in such situations you’ll be given a purpose to achieve that isn’t what you’d choose consciously for yourself. Fulfilling to spend your whole life this way? Not likely, but it’s at least a decent path for people who don’t like to think much — others will take care of all the thinking for you (and benefit greatly from all your thoughtless doing).