The Question That Pursues Us
Few questions haunt and energize us quite like “What is my purpose?” It tends to visit us most insistently during moments of frustration—when something feels missing despite outward success, or when we sense a gap between the life we’re living and the one we feel we should be living.
Some people comfortably adopt purposes that society readily offers: family, faith, career, community service. These are noble anchors that have given meaning to countless lives throughout human history. Yet for many of us—particularly those who have wrestled with periods of depression or existential anxiety—these ready-made answers, while appealing, don’t quite satisfy the deeper longing for personal significance.
The Difficulty of Direct Answers
We often approach the purpose question as if it were a riddle with a single, elegant solution—as if one day, through enough contemplation or in a moment of revelation, the perfect answer will arrive and our existential restlessness will forever cease.
This expectation may be part of what makes the question so difficult. Purpose isn’t something we typically discover through direct questioning. It’s more often revealed obliquely, through patterns in our lives that we only recognize when we step back and observe them with gentle curiosity.
Reading the Story of Your Struggles
A more fruitful approach might be to work backward, examining not what we think should matter to us, but what has actually mattered enough that we’ve been willing to suffer for it.
The poet Charles Bukowski, despite his reputation for cynicism, offered a profound insight when he wrote: “What matters most is how well you walk through the fire.”
This suggests an important question: What are the fires you’ve been willing to walk through? What difficulties have you voluntarily embraced, time and again, despite disappointment, discomfort, and even pain?
- Perhaps you’ve persisted in writing, despite minimal external validation
- Or you’ve poured yourself into raising children, even through moments of profound difficulty
- Maybe you’ve pursued athletic achievement that required early mornings and physical discomfort
- Or you’ve held out for work that feels meaningful, despite financial or social pressure to settle
These persistent commitments, especially when they’ve required sacrifice, reveal something essential about what truly matters to you. The fires we willingly walk through aren’t random—they’re signposts pointing toward our deeper purposes.
The Purpose Revealed Through Patterns
When we inventory these meaningful struggles, patterns typically emerge. Some people consistently choose challenges that involve nurturing others. Some gravitate toward creating beautiful or useful things. Others are drawn to understanding and organizing information, solving difficult problems, or building connections between people.
These patterns aren’t random; they’re expressions of your particular way of finding meaning in the world. Your purpose isn’t something foreign to be discovered but something intimate that has been expressing itself all along in what you’ve chosen to care about.
Beyond Grandiosity
There’s a common misconception that purpose must be grandiose—that unless we’re revolutionizing an industry, transforming society, or achieving fame, we’ve somehow failed at finding proper meaning. This sets an impossible standard that obscures the significance of lives lived with care and attention at smaller scales.
Purpose doesn’t require being a messiah or changing the world. It might be expressed through the conscientiousness with which you perform your daily work, the presence you bring to your relationships, or the care with which you tend to your small corner of the world.
As Walt Whitman beautifully observed: “We consider the bibles and religions divine…I do not say they are not divine, I say they have all grown out of you and may grow out of you still, It is not they who give the life…it is you who give the life.”
This suggests something profound: meaning doesn’t come to us from external authorities but emerges from our engagement with life itself. We are not passive recipients of purpose but active creators of it.
Purpose as a Compass, Not a Destination
Finding your purpose isn’t merely an intellectual exercise—though reflection is certainly important. Its true value lies in how it serves as a compass for making decisions that align with your deepest values.
When we understand what truly matters to us, we gain clarity about which opportunities to pursue and which to decline. We develop criteria for success that aren’t borrowed from others but reflect our authentic concerns. Perhaps most importantly, we develop resilience in the face of inevitable difficulties because we understand why the struggle matters.
Multiple Purposes, One Life
It’s worth noting that purpose doesn’t need to be singular. Human beings are complex, and different aspects of our lives may serve different meaningful ends. Your work might satisfy your need for intellectual challenge, while your relationships fulfill your capacity for intimacy, and your hobbies express your creativity.
These multiple purposes aren’t in competition; they’re complementary dimensions of a rich human life. The question isn’t which single purpose you should choose, but how to honor the various ways meaning expresses itself through you.
The invitation, then, is not to find your purpose once and for all, but to live purposefully—to move through your days with awareness of what truly matters to you and to make choices that honor those deeper commitments, even when they require walking through fire.
English