Purpose

On a sunny day in September 2016, I walked out of my University Graduation. My twenty two year old self seemed quite sure about what he wanted to do with life.

In a few weeks time, I was going to start a job at McKinsey. I'd pull on a blue suit, a white shirt and sling my McKinsey issued laptop bag over my shoulder. At the office I'd help solve problems for clients, in the evenings I'd have nice dinners and fall asleep in a five star hotel room. At the weekends, I'd spend my McKinsey dollars on nice things, like brunches and fancy meals and weekend getaways.

This all happened exactly like I thought it would.

But after a few years of this lifestyle, the sureness of my twenty two year old self started to fade. I started to feel that how I was spending my time was not creating the happy, contented life that I wanted. Not in a "oh feel sorry for me, my life is devoid of meaning" way. Nah nothing that serious. But in a "hmm, I wonder if there’s another path for my life out there, one where I feel more deep contentment, where I have a sense of purpose" kinda way.

My wondering led to wandering.

Wandering into a startup. Wandering to Australia. Wandering across Australia. Wandering into new friendships. Wandering out of old ones. Wandering through books that taught me new ways of looking at the world. Wandering through challenges that taught me new ways of looking at myself. Wandering up hills of triumphs, from where I had moments of clarity on the horizon of my own life. Wandering into new ideas and trying them. Wandering through a garden of different beliefs, sometimes picking them up and putting them in my pockets, sometimes taking out old ones and throwing them away.

Throughout this wandering, I started to know some things.

Now, I don't know much. I read once that “the more we learn, the more we realise how little we know” and I find this to be true. The things I do know, I know to be true for me. They may not be true for anyone else.

This is what I know;

I want to live a life of connection. I want people in my life that I care about and who care about me. I want a partner and a family. I want close friends and family who I can share anything with. I want casual friends I can laugh with. I want colleagues I can share ideas and debate with. I want strangers I can connect with for a moment, and for that moment to be enough. I want to live in a warm web of connection with others.

I want to feel. I want a life of emotion. The highs and the lows. I want to feel love. I don't want to be numb. I want experiences that allow me to feel - to experience art and music and creativity.

I want to create. I want to feel the joy that comes form making something. I want to lose myself in a flow of thoughtlessness. I want to connect with whatever magic may exist in the universe and to channel that magic into our world through one medium or another. I want to make music. To write. To lose myself in that energy of creation.

I want to play. Oh boy I want to play. In fact, when I was a boy, all I wanted to do was play. With a ball under one arm and my imagination under another, I would skip out into my garden. I would play for hours, lost in pointeless joy. I want to feel that joy of play as an adult.

I want to live in a physical world. I want to move in the real world, to feel the strength of my body, to sweat. To make things with my hands. Hanging out online doesn't do it for me. It's flat and one dimensional and my chimp brain doesn't like it there. I want to be in the natural world. To see animals and be in awe at the independence of their own little lives. I want to see big waves on a winter’s day and feel my skin tingle when I dive into the cold of the ocean. I want to see mountains in spring and big leafy parks in autumn. I want to sit on the beach in summer and hop-skotch across the sand when it's too hot.

I want to help others. I feel really good when I help others. There is a moral argument for why we should help others, but I do it for selfish reasons and I also think that's OK.

I've asked myself a lot about how to find meaning in my life; "what is my purpose?". Perhaps for the first time I have some clarity on this question; my purpose is to live in accordance with these six things.

If I've learned anything, it is that who we are and what we desire from life changes over time. So I assert this purpose with the humility of someone who knows this may change, of someone who knows they are still wandering.

But just because something may change in the future, makes it no less true right now.

And for now, this seems like a pretty good purpose to me.

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We used to get our sense of purpose from external sources, mainly religion. Some of us still do. But for many of the rest of us, it’s hard to figure out what our purpose is. In this area I have no advice, apart from noting that it is a personal journey and one you must wander yourself.