Purpose is the answer to Life’s question

One of the more remarkable people I have met is my colleague and friend who cofounded the startup the blockchain startup I lead. His story is inspirational enough for any Hollywood biopic.

He was born as a member of a stateless community in Saudi Arabia. As such, for his entire childhood, he was undocumented, with no identification and no legal status. Yet from a young age, he had an unquenchable curiosity which pushed him to seek a formal education, something nobody else is his family had considered. After years of self-education, he managed through a combination of luck and toil to get himself enrolled in an international school which was unheard of in his community at that time. Eventually, realizing that he would have no future as a stateless man in a country that was not his, he embarked on a dangerous gambit to get himself official documentation, which involved him arranging his own detainment in a hellish Saudi prison and eventual deportation. (For more details on his journey, you can check out his autobiography here.)

Years later, he had a passport, a bachelors degrees in IT, and a well-paying job in a training company in Malaysia. He had achieved a level of success that was unthinkable for 99% of his people. Yet, inexplicably, he made an abrupt course change. He dropped what he was doing, and began to dedicate 100% of his time to humanitarian work. He became a community organizer, setting up different initiatives to unify his scattered people. After all his personal struggle to achieve his perch, this new path meant less money and certainty and more challenges and sleepless nights.

Why did he do it, I would ask him? In his mind, there was complete clarity. It wasn’t about him, after all. He was responding to the demands of the situation as he saw it, which translated to responding to the needs of his people. Yes, there lingered occasional thoughts of a more comfortable life he chose not to lead, yet more as wisps of speculation than active regret.

One can imagine how difficult that choice must have been to pursue a new purpose over security and familiarity. Yet the framing he put for himself actually made the difficult choice surprisingly straightforward. In effect, the choice was already made for him once he put himself out of the equation.

The Clarifying Question

Modern day society gives us a lot of choices. We spend an inordinate amount of time focused on the ones that are not hugely consequential, like which brand of toothpaste we should buy or which Netflix show is worth an hour of our time. On the more weighty ones, concerning career, family, finance, education and so on, we tend to follow socially premeditated life patterns.

There is a logic to this, of course. These are tried and tested answers that have collective approval and take away the anxiety over decision-making. Yet, in the midst of deciding matters of importance, when balancing concerns of loved ones with expectations of work mates with our own desires, we can take advantage of a birds-eye view of our situation.

Take a good look at your life at that moment. Take the context mentioned above into consideration. Do a situational analysis where you survey the array of opportunities you have at that moment and the path you have trodden until that point. Consider the latent possibilities right then. Then assume your life has been personified. It walks up to you slowly. It remains silent. And then, going with or against your preconceived notions, it points in a particular direction.

Ask yourself: what is life asking from me at this time? Where is it drawing my skills, attention and time towards? This question helps to reframe our views and cut through the pushes and pulls of other people to connect to a higher order of priority.

Of course, it is not always the case that life provides ready-to-order answers to the question. The answer may be in the form of deeper exploration and introspection. The answer may not be purely logical and may derive to some extent from intuition, ‘gut feeling’ or spiritual guidance. The answer may be to continue to trod on the path of convention or to make some radical change. But what asking this question does do is superimpose a sense of direction and even purpose to your affairs.

Life Demands: A Recipe for Disappointment

The ‘ask-what-life-wants’ question aside, there are normally two frames of reference for how we motor along life’s highway. The first is to be constantly beholden to the immediate whims of those around us, lacking the will to take our own steering wheel. People pleasers can often end up in this category, deemphasizing their own legitimate goals for others.

The second frame, which is more actively encouraged, is to have clear and predetermined life objectives and pursue them vigorously. Yet without some overarching sense of purpose to these pursuits, they can end up being a set of demands from life, a sort of shallow wish list. Often these demands, which you may tell yourself are your own, are products of peer or family expectations. Once achieved, whether in the form of the dream job or perfect vacation, they can provide a momentary boost and then feel insubstantial.

To be fair, having life expectations is perfectly reasonable. We would want to financially stable and have a harmonious home environment, for example. But as we move along life, we need a system to allow us to revise and refocus our goals, a better rubric that is not determined by our assumptions from years ago, that is not so ‘you-centric’ and looks at the big picture.

Looking at life as something that is waiting for our unique contribution does imbue it with a sense of purpose. Purpose offers a stability and meaning to our actions beyond mere following of desire. Otherwise, we may be left with ambition without purpose, which can often be rather hollow.

Your Purpose is Where You Are Needed

There is a reason why survey show a surprisingly high percentage of millennials are asking that their workplace provide a sense of purpose, even if it comes with less financial rewards. Injecting purpose into the day-to-day work routine can transform otherwise mundane activities into meaningful events. Rather than feel that your time and energy is being ‘taken’ by a faceless corporation, you would greatly prefer it is being ‘given’ to serve a beneficial mission.

Life tends to ask from us things that are not self-serving. The answer to the life question often lies in where you are needed and where your impact can be most pronounced. Based on ones’ religious or spiritual proclivities, the life question may be viewed as more of a Divine question, of a calling towards a higher purpose from ‘above’. But for those not so inclined, ‘life’ can become a metaphor for the direction of our existence imposed on a range of possibilities.

Either way, there is a qualitative difference between someone who proceeds through life on autopilot versus someone who is following a determined path. Knowing that your actions are in lockstep with your life’s purpose gives you that extra certainty and resolve that can hopefully translate into surer success.