Imagine rolling slowly down a mountain in a giant, translucent ball. And, though you’re rolling slowly, there are no brakes. The path diverges at various points. Some paths re-converge and finish at the same place, and many lead to distinct places entirely. This is a lot like how I experience traveling through time and choice. I can’t stop the roll. And I have to chose. At each junction my choice not only has a profound impact on my experience of traveling itself, the texture of the terrain and what I see on the way, but also on my destination. I mean destination in two ways: actual physical location, and the way I express my purpose for living.
Purpose is a concept that gets thrown around in many ways, in many spheres of values. The various religions of the world seem to have the most to say on the subject. And most of these discussions are seated within a fatalistic framework. Purpose is defined externally and objectively, and what I do fulfills it. All this unfolds according to a larger plan of which I have limited to no knowledge. And the process of living is the process of revealing this plan and living in harmony with it, or not. But there is a definite plan and a purpose. And each religion, though differing on the finer points, offers itself as a medium through which we might come to know that definition—or even as the definition itself. Even the various sects of Buddhism, perhaps the least fatalistic of all, posit that the purpose of existence is to use action and prayer to transcend the cycle of samsara—the recurring cycles of paltry, temporary gratifications and reactive states: life on earth and experiences contained therein as a means to achieving a higher state of consciousness, a greater state of being. This sounds noble enough [as long as we don’t read the fine print too carefully] but is nonetheless still a purpose which is ultimately defined externally and fatalistically by the source of wisdom [authority] called Buddha.
For centuries, the religious interpretation of purpose has dominated the conversation. Obviously there are divergent perspectives, but this has been inarguably the loudest voice. And due to its persuasiveness in both the individual psyche and cultural narrative, it is the voice which has had the greatest influence on the way most people think about purpose in their daily lives.
What is the alternative? What would stand in the stead of this fatalistic, objective interpretation of purpose. Some say there isn’t anything there—that as soon as I loosen my grip on the more concrete, externally defined rope of purpose I will only tumble into a chasm of utter meaninglessness. After all, if I look closely at my own experience, and only my own experience, there seems to be no map and no clear compass. At least it can seem this way. Not only is my destination unclear to me, but my vision is like a dream. I can’t even seem to trust my own senses not to deceive me. You’ve no doubt seen the famous image of the spinning ballerina. Look once, and she’s spinning to the right; tilt your head or look again and it’s left. Some people can only see it spinning one direction, others only the other. But nobody can see it spinning both ways at once. We seem hopelessly imprisoned within our own limited subjectivity in this way. Just change the angle or light a little, twist the lens, and the whole picture morphs. Most of the time I don’t seem to have access to a reason for why, either. That I see a thing this way and not that way seems arbitrary. And the same holds true for any direction for my life in a broader sense. What, then, in a world like this, is real? And where am I going?
But what if purpose is neither entirely fatalistic and objective, nor arbitrary and subjective? It occurs to me that much of the distress people associate with ‘finding purpose’ comes from being magnetized to one of these two poles.
The first man stands before the chasm of his fate, looking up, a fist clenched at the clouds, cursing whoever or whatever defined his objective purpose in such a way—so absurdly, so at odds with his own experience of living. While many of these ‘objective’ positions about human purpose are dressed in flattering garb, their philosophical underpinnings when followed to their logical conclusions can be questionable at best. Some find themselves accepting the conceptual value framework in principle, but in practice something doesn’t align. Some identify with certain aspects of the framework and choose to overlook others, and feel distress when they finally come to confront what was overlooked. Some have been so immersed for so long, or the nature of the narrative is so covert, they’ve ceased to see it at all; their general sense of anxiety and aimlessness is a mystery with no face from which they feel inclined to flee. A common reaction in these cases is to turn in the opposite direction and pin the gas pedal—not to anywhere in particular, but simply away from the constraints of the current definition. He is the rebellious child of religion: thinking the negation of his parents’ values will move him toward freedom and greater options he fails to see his choices and direction are reactions, and thus still mere symptoms of those values.
The second man stands on the other side of the chasm, peering down into the purple, impossibly cold, seemingly arbitrary nature of his subjective experience—which seems to point to no particular direction or destination. He drops a stone and hears nothing; he gropes around the dry ledge with his hands but finds no map or compass in the dust. He’s searching for a clue, waiting to be informed. Irony: he has long abandoned the premise that purpose is defined objectively by some spiritual or religious authority, yet kicks up the dirt still hoping to find indicators of his purpose externally—according to the same objective, fatalistic model of valuation. He is the lost child of religion: his choices and direction are mere symptoms of his search to fill the absence of his parents.
A field of tall grass at dawn, the sun still sideways, casting saffron over the seeding tips. A chat with a stranger in a cafe about lost love and lost cities—without having to say so, something new is understood. A dream of relentless regret over missed embraces and un-kissed childlike faces. A promise kept to a friend through sacrifice, persistence and planning. A hilltop in Japan’s autumn, sprawling bronzes, marigolds, and apricots for the first time. A ‘thought I couldn’t but I did’: mid-winter breath, body steaming in the street, a victory over past capacity and past self.
One needn’t look farther than the textures of moment-to-moment experience to begin to see a map. There are values that exist for me, and will always exist, which well up from a source neither external nor arbitrary. If I watch closely enough, each experience I have guides me toward what I want to do and experience while I’m alive. I don’t have to ‘figure it out’ or look around for answers. I don’t have to ask anyone. Actually the more I do this, the more the answers I get are likely to be fabrications based in abstraction and concept.
Nothing is wasted: every passing feeling, every sense experience, every regret, every story, every victory and joy serves as an indicator. The map begins to fill in; the compass calibrates.
It can take some careful work to become skilled at reading these indicators clearly. There are obstacles of course. One must learn to differentiate between 1) impulses born of narratives formed in reaction to trauma, and 2) values of a higher nature, more fundamental to the organism itself. But granted one has some skill in this regard, each experience is potentially a guide toward uncovering and refining direction and destination.
This, though, presupposes that I can actually feel my experiences and allow them their full weight. Distraction and avoidance are the obstacles in this case. There’s more of these now than ever—virtually no need, and certainly not much incentive, to pause and reflect. Opportunity to fill the space is everywhere. I can pick up my phone when in a conversation I’ve decided is uncomfortable. I can turn on the TV at night to avoid a feeling or thought I’ve been pushing down all day, or perhaps all month. I can fill my time with unlimited and immediate access to what others are doing at all times. There’s no need to practice being happy and purposeful alone if I can swipe right and fill that space too.
So it’s even more crucial now that one must develop skill in stopping and feeling. Certainly I could fill time in other ways before the advent of the tech revolution. I could chop wood, I suppose, to avoid feeling and reflecting. And I think the inclination to run from taking honest inventory of values, feelings, thoughts, and actions has always been there. There are photos of metro trains in the 50’s in which 95% of the passengers were reading a newspaper. But I don’t think every train was like this. If we had the data, I would bet my life’s earnings that there’s a far higher percentage of people who use their phones on trains today than who read on trains before smartphones emerged on the market. I can also tell you subjectively that if I didn’t have my phone on the metro, I would be far more likely to opt out of reading on a few trips and instead use that time to be with myself. Though our inclinations haven’t changed much, I think it’s clear technology is providing more opportunities for our inclination toward distraction and avoidance to be expressed. We’re also becoming far more skilled at making distraction and avoidance attractive. Entire industries are dedicated to this, who have had decades to accumulate data in ways previously impossible, in order to optimize the ease and sexiness of distraction.
So I practice noticing my avoidance tactics and putting down my distractions. I look over the field, take in the scene from the hilltop for the first time, lay on the floor to put a record on and close my eyes through the whole thing, take time on the metro to remember a conversation I had earlier that week, walk down a country road for a few hours with just my clothes and my shoes, push my body to the edge of exhaustion with no music or ‘motivation’. If I practice this regularly—not to force any insight or figure anything out, but rather to feel what is already there, waiting to be known and felt—then I create opportunity to see purpose. Without the colors, the tactile experiences, the nearly imperceptible tone of spaces between moments that language fails to capture, purpose is necessarily abstract and objective.
And we are not objective; we cannot be. But it’s a mistake to conflate the subjective nature of values with arbitrariness. That values are peculiar to the individual, that they matter to the individual, is meaning enough. The things I want to do and experience before I die, and the ways I express those, are unique to me. Even my reasons for wanting to do and feel these these things are my own, and hold precisely no meaning beyond my own subjectivity.
“But what about helping others? Does’t this have meaning beyond individual subjectivity?”
Even my desire to help others or see other living things do well is itself rooted in my subjective preferences and biases. Rather than deny this I can go deep into my own subjective experiences and preferences, using them over time to refine how I live. As I observe more about myself and the world, my values clarify too; through my values I become more articulate in expressing my nature. I don’t mean ‘nature’ in a static, absolute sense. I don’t mean to say there is one nature for all humans. There are coincidences and commonalities for certain. But I mean this in a very individual way. Anyone can attest there are ways to show up well, and ways to show up badly. The feelings are very distinct. This is all I mean.
I suspect the sense of existential dread so many find pervasive is really a symptom of grappling with an abstract, objective value structure without linking it directly and intentionally to subjective values, then to no surprise failing to find personal meaning and fulfillment in such a purpose. To dread is to fear the future. And a future with no clear aim of my own, a future in which I also continue to be at odds with the aims suggested by others, is frightful indeed. And if I reject this model and turn to seek purpose in my subjective experience only to find a mess of chaotic feelings and fear-based narratives, I’ll likely fall to distraction and avoidance as I struggle to interpret and extract any broader meaning. I’ll also fail to refine that meaning into a clear, actionable value structure.
Here is a simple process you can try to use any ordinary experience as a compass toward values, and thereby toward purposeful action.
1. When a feeling arises, create space to feel it. Your intuition is a far older, faster, more developed system than your conscious forebrain. Don’t try to figure it out or analyze it. Just feel what you are feeling. Allow that feeling its full weight and impact. Ground yourself using tactile senses: feel yourself connected to something physical through your seat, your feet on the ground, the smell of the air, the texture of a table, etc. Take deep, natural, relaxed breaths. Then simply notice what you feel and allow time to pass. This feeling has meaning to you, and that meaning will play out in the way you care about certain actions going forward.
2. Ask: “How does this feeling affect my actions going forward?” Be honest and courageous here, even if the answer seems scary.
3. Ask: “Does this impulse toward action find its root in a fear-based narrative (I’m bad, I’m not safe, I’m alone)? If so, ask the above question again. But this time like this: “When I give up the belief that I’m bad/not safe/alone, then what? What do I really want?
4. Ask: What are two simple, accessible, actionable steps I could take in this direction today?”
5. Take those steps. Today. Notice how you feel when you take them. Repeat.