The Most Important Question You Will Ever Ask
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. ~Henry David Thoreau
When we consider our profound longings, our deepest desires, and our biggest fears, we all seek the answer to one question.
What is my life purpose?
This may not be something we consider daily, but it’s part of our everyday actions nevertheless. In everything we do and in every decision we make, we are seeking the answer to this unspoken question. Even the most spiritual, the most positive, and the happiest among us has occasionally wondered if the bumper sticker, “Life is hard and then we die,” has a modicum of truth to it.
We work for survival, but we also work to for a myriad of other reasons — to express our creativity, to serve others, to create a lifestyle, to gain wealth, to find fulfillment, to have power, to impress others, to purchase things. And thus we seek to live a life filled with purpose.
We have romantic relationships to procreate, but we also have relationships for stability, love, affection, intimacy, obligation sex, companionship, prestige, happiness. And thus we seek purpose.
We embrace our faith because our parents guided us, but also because of longing, hope, connection, comfort, faith, peace, obligation, fear, desperation, love, confusion. And thus we seek purpose.
In all that we do, whether we are conscious of it or not, we seek to carve out a purposeful existence in a world of confusion.
The awareness of death’s certainty, the confusion about a possible afterlife, the reality of human pain and suffering, the hypocrisies of world religions, the randomness of life and its tragedies — these all conspire to shake us and undermine our faith in mankind’s dignity and divine intelligence. What separates us from the lowly worm? We are born. We live. We die.
Have you been thinking about these things for much of your life? Are you a seeker?
I am. I continue to seek my life purpose. I have had faith, but it has been frequently shaken. I have sought the truth, only to discover that my truth isn’t always The Truth. I have hammered my stake in the hard ground of absolute knowledge, only to watch the earth quake and rumble and the stake fall away into the abyss.
I now recognize that I “know” nothing, but I can never give up on seeking. I no longer seek for The Answer. I seek for the pleasure of seeking. I have learned to embrace mystery, ambiguity, uncertainty. I accept that it may be, it may not be. It is real, it is an illusion. There are nuggets of truth and beauty even in allegories and fairy tales. I can be happy with that. In fact, I think I like it.
So I come back to the question — what is my life purpose?
My purpose is to use this very moment, this “right now” –
to serve
to grow
to create
to learn
to love
to connect
to seek
to explore
to sow peace
to simply be
My purpose is to love this moment now so much that everything I do and everything I am is an expression of that love.
If we can do this most of the time, if we can just remember — “this is my moment, this is my purpose right now, so don’t let it slip by,” then we will have lived a life of passion and purpose. I invite you to examine your own life right now and define your purpose. Who do you want to be? What do you want to do? How do you want to live? If you live in accordance with your purpose, you will no longer live in quiet desperation. You will live from passion.