Purpose

Purpose is not talent. It is not your interest. Purpose is not even passion. Though passion may to a certain degree reveal purpose. They are not the same. Think mistaking the gasoline for the flame itself. They are not the same, not even close.

There has been a restlessness growing inside me for a while now. It started small and now it gnaws, at the inside of my chest and mind and at the edges of everything about my life. Today I discovered that the monster was not a monster at all, but a friend urging me to search for my purpose. “It is why you can’t sleep, and don’t want to wake up,” it says. “Why you look with longing at every flying thing, and want to run to some unknown place.”

I realize that this is why despite the countless books, sermons, and platitudes I have never found one that explains precisely what purpose is. The hunt for purpose is a great deal like the search for the illusive Eros, it is much more about discovering what it is not than what it is in your attempt to find the thing itself. A process of elimination.

And while we are on the subject of contradictions, the only way to capture, or rather be captured, by the thing is with a pure heart. But the road that draws you closer is full of clouds and mud and dirt and filth frustrations that you are meant to filter. You are meant to find light in this great darkness, or more, be light. How do I make my way to the things I want most when I am tired from seeking and weary from wandering? How do I keep doing life feeling now the lack of why?

Hope, I think.