Purpose (Essay)
Purpose
by
Vanessa Hatton
We lose our sense of purpose during the search for serendipity, although that search—that process—is also how we find it again. What a conundrum it is, looking for purpose via begging the universe for any excuse to live in it. And it’s funny, because I do it, too. Sometimes, I like to press the shuffle button on my apple music playlists and tell myself, “This next song will tell me what to do.” What a silly girl I’ve been.
We do a dance around our purpose, shuffling our feet around it because that dance means we’re moving, and that movement means we aren’t stagnant and not being stagnant means we’re not like (insert any negative comparison you can think of here). It might be your friends. It might be your siblings. It might be that ne’er-do-well uncle everyone reminds you that you look like. It might be your mom or your dad. We tango and waltz around our life’s calling because it seems too big for us. No one is ever really satisfied in life, so to expect ourselves to be is to be childish. Expecting ourselves to remain in the period of stagnation needed to acknowledge our purpose is silly. It’s silly because we don’t actually need to sit still to acknowledge our purpose. When we sit still, we feel we have no reason to justify pursuing it.
Purpose is that intrinsic part of us that separates us from every other species living on this planet. We build, we create, and we destroy solely as a result of the hubris that is purpose. Many of us learn and live in our purpose early on. And many of us destroy it early on because it scares us. It’s funny, it’s like when the agent in the Matrix was trying to explain that the robots had attempted to make the Matrix a paradise, but humans rejected it. Imagine not being able to sit still in paradise because it doesn’t seem fair to live in one. Imagine not being able to sit still in our purpose because it doesn’t seem fair to do so.
Our purposes are intertwined, and our failure to acknowledge that is our failure to live in them. I’d like to think that my purpose is to write this essay about purpose. Like many writers, my purpose is to ask people if what I’m saying resonates with them in some way, so that we all feel a little less lonely. My purpose is to see the interconnectedness and share it, whatever the heck that means. I believe in reciprocation; I tell you what my purpose is and like any other conversation I flip the question back: What is your purpose?
The truth is, when we’re asked that question, we automatically know the answer. And we fear it. “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.” Yes, yes, very cliché. But, as a friend once told me, clichés are clichés for a reason. Our purpose is the innocent, child-like part of us that never died, that for whatever reason we couldn’t squash or place a cover over. It’s the part of ourselves that we love the most, therefore it’s the part we hide to save from rejection. It’s the part of ourselves we ask the universe to confirm for us, because to love yourself and live in that love so entirely seems… almost selfish. We beg the universe for an excuse to live in our purpose. How about this? Stop begging. We know our purpose.
