Purpose-driven lives

I hate running. Normally I wouldn’t run unless someone was chasing me with a weapon. Unfortunately, running is the best way to wear out Piper. Yesterday we did a 3 mile interval (running/walking) and finished up at the pond on campus. Piper was worn out enough that she got into the water, waded and swam around, and then laid down in the water. This is spectacularly unusual because Piper is 100% mutt, but enough lab that she can’t resist a stick or a ball.

Oprah’s doing this thing with Eckhart Tolle’s book, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose. And watching Piper in the water, halfheartedly holding a stick in her mouth but lying down in the water so I can’t make her fetch it, I started thinking about this need people have for a Life’s Purpose.

Piper is not a complicated animal. In fact, most animals aren’t that complicated. Piper likes to chase sticks (and balls, and rabbits). When there’s a stick or a frisbee nearby, Piper is completely and totally focused on it. That is the center of her existence. But when there isn’t a fetching tool around, she’s not MISERABLE. She doesn’t lie down and heave enormous sighs, feeling bad because there’s no frisbee or all. She clearly doesn’t spend all of her time thinking that she needs a frisbee. She finds other things to do with her time. She enjoys having people pet her as much as she likes fetching. She likes to look out our front door and windows. She likes to lie in our bed. She loves truck surfing.

Animals don’t need a Life Purpose. They are drawn to certain activities, biologically or not, but in the absence of those activities aren’t depressed or unable to do other things. People are animals. I mean, a lot of people don’t like to admit it but that’s what we are. Mammals. Not all that different from dogs and pigs and monkeys. But people are obsessed with having this One Reason to exist. A Life’s Purpose which will make everything else in life more relevant and enjoyable.

My dad was a very wise man. As with most very wise men, you don’t realize how wise they are until many years after they’ve been wise around you. He always told me that, “No one and nothing can MAKE you happy. You have to choose to be happy because if you’re not happy with yourself, no one else can be happy with you.” The other wise guy in my life has this to say: “I don’t go to work to get fulfilled. I go to work to make the money I need to do OTHER things I enjoy. I get my fulfillment in other places.”

Nobody wakes up and thinks, “I am destined to be a telemarketer.”* But for some reason, people are obsessed with finding this One Thing. I’m more likely to combine the wisdom of my guys and the lessons Piper provides. Find things you enjoy. Enjoy them. Those things will probably change over time. Don’t get too worked up about those things changing. And it’s okay to not love your job. It’s okay not to get any fulfillment from your job. That’s what the other things you enjoy are for.

The truth of the matter is that, like dogs, we don’t HAVE One Purpose. Each of us is different and gets fulfillment from different things at different stages in our lives. I like practicing yoga because 1. It makes my body feel good, 2. It helps keep me in the moment, which reminds me how unimportant a lot of other things are, and 3. It calms me down and makes me feel happy. I will endeavor to keep TEACHING yoga for the rest of my life because I love being able to share those things with other people. I will probably never make a living at it and that’s okay. I would also probably never have become a yoga teacher if my father hadn’t died. There are things that change your path, sometimes dramatically, so to think that there’s just One Thing that you’re meant to do isn’t just unrealistic – it’s kind of silly.

Holding on to the idea that “I’m meant to do this One Thing” is a guarantee for disappointment with your life – and how much fun is that? Accept that there are things you do because you need to, there are things you do because you want to, and neither has to have some Bigger Purpose in your life.

Do what you like.

Enjoy your life because it’s far too short to do anything else.