When I was growing up, whenever adults wanted to inspire us to work or study harder, they would always say ‘you’re put on this Earth for a purpose.’ The problem is, they would – or could – never say what that purpose was.
Old and gray now, I understand what they were trying to do, but nearly eight decades of experience have brought me to the conclusion that they were saying it wrong.
My belief is that we as individual entities are the result of a random merger of sperm and egg with no preordained purpose other than to survive, and even that is not ‘planned.’ That we, and as far as I know, we alone, have been blessed – or cursed – with the capacity of self-awareness, causing us to question our existence, creates the need for such beliefs.
But, I think the belief that each of us was ‘put here for a purpose’ leads down a road to an unfortunate conclusion. This implies that everything is preordained, or predestined, and we, despite our sapience, have no power to do anything about it. We are but a grand of sand being blown about by the wind of destiny.
There is, though, another way of looking at it. We’re put here, and because of our self-awareness, it’s left to us to ‘find our purpose.’ This accounts for all those people who drift through life with ho apparent sense of purpose, as well as those who seem driven from an early age.
It’s not just a lottery, where some are born with the winning number, while everyone else gets a string of zeros, but an active playing field, where we have some degree of control over the course we run.
Sometimes we’ll win, and sometimes we’ll lose. The laws of averages say that for the most part, there will be a roughly equal number of wins and losses in the end. There will, of course, always be the outliers. The born losers who can never seem to catch a break, and the lucky few for whom everything comes up roses.
On the Bell Curve of life, though, these two are way out at the edges. The rest of us are lumped in the big body of the bell and where we finally land depends a lot on the effort we put into it.
So, the next time you set out to motivate some youngster, don’t say ‘you were put on this Earth for a purpose.’ Instead, say, “you’re here now, what are you doing to find your purpose?” | NWI
