While humans have contemplated the meaning of their lives since the dawn of civilisation, the phrase “life purpose” has been coined fairly recently, likely stemming from the rise of the 1970 New Age movement.
It has become popular, almost indispensable, to seek and discover one’s “life purpose” in order to succeed in the game of life. Just providing for your family while doing what you loved as a hobby has stopped being enough. Instead, an idea emerged that there has to be a Grand Life Purpose, some Holy Grail of success and abundance.
There are several insidious myths implicit in such a vision of life purpose that I would like to unpack before exploring what life purpose could truly be behind the shiny labels and loud slogans.
Part I: 7 Popular Myths about life purpose
1 | Your life must have a purpose
The origin of this myth is likely to have roots in the societal hierarchy and class systems. Unless there was an obvious utility to a person as a member of their society, this person was considered a useless waste of space. Working and middle classes, in particular, had to have a “trade” or a “job”, in order to be deemed useful or even to survive in the industrialised world.
In this way, the society calling to people to have a purpose is akin to a parent shouting at their offspring to “stop messing about, and go do something useful”.
2 | You can only have a single purpose
I remember watching a film with my daughter, “A Dog’s Purpose”. The tagline of the film is “Every dog happens for a reason.” Clearly, that’s an example of us anthropomorphising our pets to have a life purpose. Note, it’s “a reason”, not “reasons”. The idea that each of us has a single, grand reason for existence (like how a peasant lives to work the land, a merchant lives to keep the economy going in his/her sphere of influence, and a king lives to rule) is of course nothing new. Although this notion is motivating for some and without intrinsic danger, it has a dark side. This idea of a single life purpose is often used as a mechanism for blaming and shaming those poor souls who haven’t discovered such a purpose; it becomes at best a distraction from living an engaging life and, at worst, an obsession that generates a huge amount of frustration and gets people depressed, rather than inspired.
Why can’t a person have multiple purposes for living, such as being a good parent and partner, a true friend, a skilled professional, and a devout gardener all at once?
3 |You have to get paid for it OR You have to do it for free.
The notion of life purpose is frequently contaminated by faulty monetary ideals and ideas. These can range all the way from “It’s not spiritual to make money from your gift” to “Your life purpose is only truly expressed if you’ve made shit loads of money while working it”. What if both extremes are wrong? The first one is rooted in the Franciscan notion that those in poverty are closer to God, and the second one is just the American Dream with a New Age twist.
Both extremes seem to have two highest levels of Maslow’s pyramid of human needs – with “Esteem” (prestige and feeling of accomplishment) and “Self-actualisation” (achieving one’s full potential) – intertwined in an unhealthy way. Unsatisfied Esteem level contaminates the fulfilment of the Self-Actualisation level.
While I find nothing wrong with having a lot of cash and living in luxury (or, while we’re on it, nothing necessarily wrong with sleeping on cardboard on the street), making one’s life purpose dependent on having / not having a specific amount of money to come with it, is simply an attempt to monetise meaningfulness. It’s like saying: “If I made more money than you, my life got to be more valuable and meaningful than yours”. Sounds ridiculous, right? But some people buy into that, literally.
4 | Your life purpose has to visibly impact tons of people.
There is an idea that a true life purpose, one that really counts, has to be large-scale, impactful for many, and, ideally, save the planet. Without getting into the discussion on whether the Earth needs to be saved, I’d like to observe that this myth, like Myth no 3, is trying to put a numerical value on life purpose. Oh, so one has that many 1,000s of YouTube or Instagram followers, or, even better, so many people voted for them in the election? They must be living a really valuable life purpose then… Which would, ironically, make Donald Trump, and other public faces with a lot of followers experts on life.
So is it really true that those who are the loudest, most in your face, most popular, are the ones who you listen to for words of wisdom?
Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against people who are loud, clear, compelling and convincing (my dear wife, Shoshana, being one of them!). Such people can do a lot of good for themselves and the world. Don’t get discouraged, though, if you’re somewhat introverted and reserved, the idea that your value is defined by likes and follows is childish.
5 | You will get happy once you discover your life purpose and align your life with it.
As my NLP trainer and friend, Jamie Smart, taught me many years ago, any sentence construction that states “I’ll be happy when…” is a primary indicator of a toxic dream. I’ll be happy when graduate, when I get a promotion, when I get married, when I have kids, when I earn a lot of money, etc. “I’ll be happy / get happy when I discover and live my life purpose” is just that, a toxic dream. It stops people living in the present and being attentive to what is really going on for them. Instead, it gets them reaching out into the future, which is unbalancing, and unaccepting of what is. If that future seems to be around the corner, great, sprinting to the finish line could be a lot of fun. If, however, “achieving” one’s life purpose is somewhere beyond the horizon, the person’s life race can become deeply demoralising, infuriating and exhausting.
6 | Living your life purpose has to involve hardship, perseverance and sacrifice.
All of us have been brainwashed into a myth of hard work and perseverance. Can you remember any film or a book, where the protagonist didn’t endure a fair amount of hardship, or even outright suffering before they arrived at the happy forever after? I, personally, cannot. Surely, lots of drama makes for a better story. Those quietly tranquil and happy people hardly ever become the main characters of any public story. But this doesn’t deem their lives meaningless.
Of course, it is convenient for powers that be for us to believe that only hard work, suffering and perseverance can lead to accomplishing one’s life mission (if there is one, see myth no 1!). This generates more work-hours and “solid work ethic”. But, in essence, this is just a workaholic’s dream.
7 | Life purpose has to be loud and obvious.
This, last myth deserves its own place, even though I touched on the “loudness” of life purpose in myth no 4. Billions of people around the world don’t have the privilege of being the ‘right’ skin colour, or the ‘right’ sex, or the wealth to even wonder what their life purpose would be. In fact, lots of these myths about life purpose are intrinsically classist and sexist inventions. And those who are pale-skinned (yes, even in Asia), (ideally) male and wealthy are stacked to win the game of life purpose.
But what if some of the things that give your life meaning and purpose are being a carer or a parent for your loved ones, or writing poetry, or having a truly embodied experience of exercise. Those subtle, understated purposes are no worse, or better, than the more obvious ones.
To sum up, I truly believe that life purpose resides not in the bottom-line, fame or one’s ability to articulate it in a single sentence, but rather in day-to-day living that is full of meaning. This meaning is yours to create; don’t let others dictate it for you.
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