Expanding on my observations about purpose and seeing it break through the noise, my therapist mentioned that there are some real certainties that we may be unwilling to accept about life. She said that life really is about coping and managing things to survive. Even animals have to do this. In a functional society, our survival isn't nearly as fraught, but whether it's parenting or working or providing, we are always challenged. And if you really want to go there, it never stops, until we die. So in some ways, we're also trying to avoid the existential crisis about why we even exist. We are ephemeral, and the vast majority of us will have limited impact on what happens after we're gone. It's kind of dark.
In some ways, critters have it easier. A cockroach only really knows one purpose, which is to procreate. Maybe that's why they've been around for millions of years. Being human is tricky, because as I said, intellectually, one could arrive in a place where our lives are pointless. Sure, we want to procreate as well, but that doesn't require any particular skill. We have to derive purpose in other ways.
Unfortunately, our cultural expectations and norms make this difficult. We have a lot of baggage that does not serve us well. For example, we associate need with weakness, but we all have needs, and they can't necessarily be acquired without others. We have this idealist view that will is all it takes to reach some arbitrary condition of success, despite the fact that the circumstance of the birth lottery has far more to do with our outcomes. It's a standard belief that enjoying work is ideal, and not enjoying it is a character flaw. Tell that to the people that you depend on to do really crappy things that no one else will do. And as I've said before, we measure our own value in ways that are kind of ridiculous. It's bad enough that we may depend on others to feel valued, but even if we don't, we may measure our value based on the scope of our impact on the world. We make it really hard for purpose to surface.
A currently trendy business metaphor is the flywheel. The idea is that a flywheel takes a lot of energy to get turning, but once it does get turning, momentum and less (or different) effort keeps it going. So let's say that you sell something amazing, and people love it, so they keep buying it, and keep telling others, so they buy it, and you get this sustaining flywheel of continued business.
Life, it seems, tends to have negative flywheels. For me and my brain, all of the things that are exhausting keep that negative wheel turning, and it's hard to get back to purpose. Purpose is the positive flywheel. When it stalls, for me, it's really hard to get it turning again. I think that's where my head has been for at least six to nine months.
If you throw away the above cultural expectations, I think you can get that flywheel turning in a sustainable way. Accept that you have needs. Accept that you're not shitty because you can't do certain things, even if you wish that you could. Know that work can just be something that you do, and isn't necessarily your identity (though don't stay in work situations that outright devalue you). Find value in what you do regardless of scope. Purpose will bubble up and drive you to keep doing all the things. That's where life's joy will come from. That's the point, even if we are mortal.
The cliche about enjoying the journey has a lot of truth behind it. Because let's be real, the destination is the same for all of us.
No comments yet.