“Purpose is not something created by the cunning to lead the clueless. It does exist.”
Prologue
The absence of purpose is life-impoverishing, collectively and individually. mesothelioma symptom its place emerges a functional relevance, which cheapens our efforts and narrows our vision. In this climate, concepts of social responsibility and individual worth are eroded by a consignment to insipid duties. The fault of contemporary education lies in its failure to inspire students beyond their ability to barter professionally. Today’s self-help phenomenon flourishes partly because of this failure. Politically put, purpose is an inalienable right. Only through its pursuit is happiness possible. Conceptually, happiness is too abstract to envision, too nebulous to achieve. Instilled, however, a sense of purpose buoys hopes and builds dreams. It forges bonds and nurtures boldness. Matured, a sense of purpose enables us to accept our common humanity and life’s contingencies. It is the prerequisite of greatness, as examined in the story below.
THE PREREQUISITE OF GREATNESS
“If the Lord is with us, why then has all of this happened to us?” According to Hebrew literature, this lament pursed the lips of Gideon, guardian of the Israeli army. Then, however, he was not yet the hero he was destined to become. In fact, Gideon was the youngest member of the weakest clan in Israel. His complaint contrasted the angelic assurance, “The Lord is with you, you mighty man of valor.” Gideon could not understand how God could be with him while he and his nation were knotted in slavery. He failed to realize, however, that adversity is oftentimes necessary to develop a sense of purpose, which is the prerequisite of greatness.
Still, despite Gideon’s angst the angel re-spoke, now expanding his message, saying, “Go in this might of yours, and you shall save Israel from the hand of her enemies.” Not only did the apparition affirm his greeting; he also commissioned Gideon as Israel’s savior. How perplexed Gideon must have felt. Who was he to free his people? In Gideon’s mind, he was no savior, but merely the victim of previous events. Yet in obedience to the angel he overcame his apprehension and led Israel’s rout.
How often do we ignore our admonitions? How often do we magnify our trials and miss the opportunities they conceal? Winston Churchill, the English champion, sagely spoke when he said, “Difficulties mastered are opportunities won.” Anyone acquainted with Churchill’s story knows his struggles. Professionally he often stumbled, though not enough to deny his rise.
By the time Churchill became Prime Minister, Britain was fighting a bitter world war. Yet in characterizing his climb, he declared, “I felt as if I were walking with destiny, and all of my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial.” This confession silenced his critics and sanctioned his primacy. More importantly, it revealed his perspective. Churchill’s circumstances may have been stunting and suffocating even, but each had its purpose. Each trial pruned his character and developed his confidence. How admirable he and others with his outlook must appear to persons without a sense of purpose.
Everyone born has a purpose, though few seem to discover it. Persons without this knowledge are often neurotic, annoyed perhaps. They imagine their days to be arbitrarily consumed rather than being deliberately designed to prepare them for life’s greater challenge. In the end, they are overwhelmed and often envy the accomplished. Unfortunately, a lack of utter steadfastness and inner stillness deceives them. The presence of these traits would grant a revealing gaze backward, allowing them to discern the pattern in their problems.
Without a sense of purpose, however, utter steadfastness and inner stillness both are sterile and thus must be aligned. Once combined, they produce creative endurance, without which we are idly dreaming. Creative endurance, though, is life-redeeming. It enables us to fashion dismal conditions into practical purposes. By it, an impoverished orphan fought partial blindness and chronic sickness to achieve educational success. In the process, Anne Sullivan transformed an impaired child into a national treasure -Helen Keller.
By creative endurance, Mary Wollstonecraft impeached masculine wrongs and promoted feminist rights in her candid critique, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Creative endurance doesn’t just ask why but also how. The moment we ask “how” we are, according to Ralph Emerson, “No longer minors and invalids in a protected corner, nor cowards fleeing before a revolution.” We become rather utterly steadfast, “Obeying the Almighty effort and advancing on Chaos and Dark.” Creative endurance enables us to transcend our inherent and inherited tragedies.
Inner stillness is the remaining element producing creative endurance. It is the cultivated habit of practicing contemplative quietness. By contemplative quietness, I do not mean sleep. Contemplative quietness is characterized by a conscious effort to fuse all of the fragments that frustrate our lives. During these times, we ponder our circumstances and our peculiar response. In reflecting, however, we aren’t idle and certainly not pouting. Rather, we are seeking patterns.
The answers to many of our adversities are anchored in our routines. Once we identify the pattern, the solution appears. Moreover, by identifying patterns we avoid solving symptoms. Seeing further, we uncover their cause instead. This cause becomes the catalyst creating new action. Our impetus issues from practicing inner stillness. A restless soul is too impatient to see the pattern. Instead, it will mimic Gideon’s regret, why has all of this happened to us?
The person with a sense of purpose, however, is slow to slander circumstances. Unconsciously perhaps, this overcomer recognizes that everything life allows aids its development. So, disheartening though they are, difficulties become the diet enriching the soul. Gradually, through creative endurance, this person acquires the courage to accept the inevitable and to embrace the unlikely.
Most of us perhaps aren’t as enthusiastic. Even optimists despair. In this regard, a sense of purpose doesn’t promise us immunity from trouble but it does grant us ingenuity amidst it. Still, amid calamity we may cry, “Why didn’t I die from the womb!” Afterwards, however, provided we have a sense of purpose, comes the pledge, “Do not rejoice over me my enemy. For though I have fallen, I will yet rise again.”
Now we are ready to reassert ourselves, renouncing our complaints accordingly. Obeying a higher call, we choose to become courageous instead. Even so, a sense of purpose is not a myopic preoccupation with our own importance. Nor does it harden us toward the suffering of others. On the contrary, a sense of purpose binds us together, and is the unfeigned love that forgives our collective faults. It tempers our wildest tantrums. In answering its call, we neither alienate others nor elevate ourselves.
We identify instead with the disenfranchised. A sense of purpose enables their progress to become our problem. Ultimately, it inspires us to place sobering faith in the sovereign divinity who shapes our destiny. Having learned these lessons, we spend our lives awakening in them this same intuition.
THE MORAL OF THE STORY (AND THE STRUGGLE)
To some, this article may seem naive. But that’s only because we have allowed our senses to be deceived. Thus, we are indifferent toward other people’s purpose and their problems. Unfortunately, however, other people’s problems seldom settle within the boundaries that our indifference assigns. They inevitably seep and stain our side. When this happens, we see the necessity of having a life-task. Having such, of course, won’t exclude problems. But it will ease the anxieties they cause.
A sense of purpose enables us to feel better about ourselves and our circumstances, even when we falter and they sour. Only then do we become optimists. We may lack the outlook that admits, “Everything is for the best…”. But we can endure setbacks without becoming cynical, nor must contradictions unduly confound. With a sense of purpose, we can limit their power despite their presence.
Pursuing this purpose, however, will cast us as wise to some and foolish to others. But if we can ignore opinions and remain determined we can achieve. Otherwise, we will squander our potential in narrow places. For many though, purpose, like success, is also elusive. Repeatedly beaten, these persons unwittingly banish themselves from destiny’s court where purpose leads. Once this happens, all that remains of optimism is for it to receive a decent burial. Yet destiny is the end that purpose seeks.
Currently, however, our educational system ignores this knowledge and insults these principles. So, purposes go unprobed and destinies remain undiscovered. Students learn instead egoistic axioms. This disregard for purpose morally impoverishes. In fact, without a sense of purpose morality is impeded. Nurtured, however, a sense of purpose ennobles our efforts and connects them to something higher than our own sentiments. It may not awaken a sixth sense but it makes sense to the enlightened.
A sense of purpose inspires respect for universal principles and individual rights. Otherwise, our aims err; they also offend. Unchecked, they chase us beyond common sense and moral boundaries. Forsaken is the fidelity to and belief in cosmic justice that its presence rightly rooted imparts. We act instead as if we are morally strung and must cheat to compete. This claim corrupts corporate America. It’s also why some athletes depend on steroids to excel. These use their energy and industry to attain infamy.
But what if we reversed our methods? What if we told students that they have a special purpose? What if we explained to them that to be special is to be specific, to be clear about who they are and what they want. Could we not create a purpose-driven culture? Could we not counter conceits that make purpose a “special” privilege? Otherwise, students fail to discover deeper motives for their education or their social role. In this climate, how can destinies be auto insurance companys and success be redefined? How can we expect an arrogant individualism to produce citizens who examine themselves before they act, not after they are caught cheating in an effort to achieve?
Deceptively sought, these achievements eventually usurp the rights of purpose. They do so because many people confuse status and achievement with purpose and destiny. Though purpose involves achievement, achievements alone don’t determine success. That’s why purpose is so important. Purpose helps us to accept ourselves by healing the sore caused by the division of labor, which elevated the status (and pay) of some laborers above others.
Of course, few will refuse the benefits of labor evenly allotted. But this assignment aside, labor’s separation allowed status to supplant purpose. It remains so today because no one likes to feel inferior, especially when these tasks betray their talent. So, millions pursue professions in search of status, rejecting their purposes accordingly, to the extent that, purpose and destiny, if not denied, are discredited. In this climate, ambition blinds and anxieties vex.
A sense of purpose, however, gives us the courage to be, if not the best, our best, at least, which is all that we can ask. In making this request, we can acknowledge our limitations without enthroning them, setting instead noble goals, and, if we have the requisite humility, acknowledge God. Then, perhaps our results will mirror our morals. Moreover, in accepting our limits we learn nature’s lesson, which requires us to acknowledge the principle of rotation.
This principle teaches us that people, like plants, alternately bloom. Without this knowledge, we may abandon our efforts prematurely. Yet, few lives or actions sprout immediately. Those that do so begin as prodigies but often end as effigies, metaphorically, victims of a potential more exploited than developed. But if we reflect, we can all recall times when our best efforts failed and our modest ones flourished. This flowering had as much to do with nature’s timing as it did with our efforts, though efforts matter. Through the principle of rotation, however, we avoid the vanity of blooming unseasonably.
Acknowledging this principle enables us to honor ourselves and not just our aims. It helps us to understand that we aren’t barren just because we haven’t bloomed. This knowledge won’t eliminate frustrations but it will diminish them by encouraging us to accept our peculiar pace. We can also learn compensation’s law, which maintains nature’s balance, because everything in nature is equipped for survival. Thus, some animals are stronger but others are faster and can outrun those that they cannot outfight.
Still, others lacking in strength, camouflage where they can’t confront. The same is true of us. We can’t do everything but we can do something, according to our qualities. It doesn’t matter whether we are hampered, pampered, or ignored. A sense of purpose keeps us focused, enabling us to adapt or to endure disfavor. Besides, it is better to be outcast than overcome by affection. Many a soul has found its destiny dangling at the frayed ends of a broken trust.
PURPOSE: THE ULTIMATE PRESENT
For some, a sense of purpose makes them divine agents. These angels set trends, challenge errors, and initiate reforms. Some unravel contemporary riddles while others anticipate future crises. Both forgo fleeting rewards to reap the greater harvest of the greatest good for everyone affected. They retain the innocence to believe in the impossible, yet still respect practical wisdom and proven principles. They may not be household names. Yet, somewhere in the community grateful citizens whisper their name nightly in prayer. They may be unknown to us but they are well known to God. Their attitude enlivens the present though many are creatively plagued.
Circumstantially, a sense of purpose doesn’t always make us favored but it does make us determined, especially when we realize that most circumstances are temporary. Without this sense, however, we view problems as permanent and inexplicably personal. But if we grasped its power, we would broaden our perspective and learn what the moment has to teach. Unfortunately, many of us are too passive to be this assertive. We live for moments instead of in them. But as we age, we learn that, like us, moments are also mortal and soon pass. In these instances, a sense of purpose radically empowers. By it, we create our own moments through the goals we set.
GOALS: THE PATH OF PURPOSE
When we fail to set goals, we allow others to decide if we are successful. Goals help us to monitor our progress and manage the stresses of a competitive climate. They don’t eliminate all of our anxieties but they do remind us to celebrate our journey instead of waiting until we reach our destination. More importantly, goals allow us to keep our own counsel. Others may not know our progress or our purpose yet we do. Goals encourage us to be grateful for slight advances.
Goals also cause our vision to embrace the global community, as we become aware of previous accomplishments. These accomplishments established the standards of excellence. Our awareness of them keeps us from the naivety of believing that all we know is all there is. This awareness enables us to see the big picture and the Painter of the portrait. In acknowledging these standards, however, we don’t relinquish the right to applaud our progress. But we are commended to modesty, remembering that much was accomplished before we began. Ultimately, knowledge of global standards keeps greatness from being cheapened and mediocrity from being championed.
Sadly, however, global standards intimidate many of us because we neither understand their purpose nor discern their importance. Standards were never established to indict us or to accuse us of being inadequate. Nor were they created to make us devalue our efforts. Standards were formulated to help us simplify our lives and civilize our relations. They remind us not to take ourselves too seriously or others too lightly. They impart perspective when it is lacking. They were never meant to motivate foolish comparisons.
When we compare ourselves with others, our feats appear feeble and hardly worth rehearsing. Comparisons also engage us in the game of collecting crowns. Abandoning our original aims, seeking superlatives deceives us as we strive to become the biggest, richest, and wisest. Like the character in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, comparisons cause us to live longing to manifest a feat, which will give others a proper reflection of our importance. Yet this feat seldom follows if it ever does so. Meanwhile, we grow cynical toward others and critical of ourselves. Ultimately, comparisons leave us feeling inferior, inadequate, and obsolete.
As an experiment, place two people of similar interests together and listen to their conversation. Often, one will attempt to assume supremacy over the other. This attempt is usually determined by who has come closest to hitting the global standard. Before their conversation, the other person may have celebrated herself for progress made toward her goal. Yet, she may become apologetic or perhaps envious for having achieved less than her counterpart. Downplaying her own efforts, she may be seized by self-contempt. Gradually, her voice lowers, the smile vanishes, and a once cordial encounter chastens. Every word from the speaker’s lips falls like lashes across her back.
A sense of purpose, however, judges results not by what others have accomplished but by our aspirations. Are we doing our best? This should be our barometer. Others may exceed us but we shouldn’t be incensed. Yet intimidation initiated by comparison often incites. Intimidation breeds envy. Envy breeds enmity, and enmity deceives us into transgressing once treasured loyalties. Mark Antony’s fall reflects this folly.
Aligning himself with Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, Antony engages his former ally, Octavius Caesar, in battle, ignoring a soothsayer’s warning that whenever he contended with Caesar, Antony would lose. True to the oracle, Antony’s heart melts amid the battle, his army deserts him, and he commits suicide. A similar fate afflicts many today. Motivated by greed or inspired by guile, these battle foolishly only to suffer needlessly.
Goals help us to avoid ambition’s vanity. They remind us of what we are after and how far we have come. They help clarify the lines between opportunity and greed, social concern and selfish ambition. Others may achieve more but we shouldn’t be intimidated or envious. Instead, we can admire their efforts while applauding our own. More importantly, goals enable us to declare our greatness and to express our potential. Too often, in the absence of goals, we glorify potential and degrade greatness. Not “what can you do,” but “what do you intend to do” is the question society asks each of us.
Goals enable us to respond confidently. They empower us to effect change instead of feigning it. They don’t guarantee success but they must be set before success is achieved and our journey is enjoyed. Standards measure the magnitude of our efforts, but goals tell us when we have succeeded. Where no goals exist, success cannot be measured and purpose cannot be marked. With a sense of purpose, however, we can pursue our path without yielding to comparisons. Its presence makes us more resilient, more responsible, and better able to realize our ideal.
Epilogue
The effects of purpose are pervasive. It changes our lives by challenging our limits, enabling our steps to be giant, genuine, and humane. A sense of purpose pushed Pat Tillman to reject athletic glory to join the military, where he ultimately died defending democracy. Embraced, a sense of purpose can spark a reformation or spawn a revolution.
Yet, we cannot measure its impact by these appeals alone because it can also convince a parent to forfeit the luxuries of a second income to remain home and nurture a child. In an era when manners are waning, a sense of purpose still insurance quotes auto doors for others and respects its elders. It restores civility to a churlish society. It does not need the excitement of holidays or the incentives of fortune to arouse it.
Purpose regards no such gifts, but to the soul engulfed, its sense is life-preserving.
Transcending our inherent selfishness, a sense of purpose causes us to assume responsibility for satisfying our inherited debt to others. In accepting this responsibility, we are no longer vainly but vitally living. In fact, the vow of greatness, “When I grow up, I’m going to be…” is the voice of purpose seeking fulfillment. Until we heed this voice, we will repeat the same lessons and forfeit the marvelous life that a sense of purpose makes possible.