Purpose: It Exists, It Matters, and It Only Needs to Be Uncovered — Not Discovered

I’ve been afraid to write this post, to let this post come out of me. I still am. And while I want to say that I’ve been psyching myself up for over an hour to get going on it (which I have), the truth is that I’ve been psyching myself up to affirm the message behind it for years.

I’m scared to say what I’m about to say because, deep down, I think people will laugh at me, if only to themselves. That they’ll roll their eyes and see me as melodramatic, full of myself, or both. That they’ll tell me, as some people do, that I “think too much.” That they’ll see me as a foolish idealist who needs to come down from the clouds and back to earth, to the real world where my feet stay on the ground. And that they won’t get what I’m really trying to say anyway because what I’ve written just isn’t good enough.

All the while I’ll be beating myself up for worrying about what other people think to begin with, since it goes against my own frequent claim that I don’t worry about what other people think!

I guess I do.

But I’ve reached a point where it’s riskier for me and my own well-being to remain silent than to, as my mother used to put it, “go forth” — to go ahead and speak from my heart. So it’s time. It’s time for me to jump and see if the net really does appear.

Here goes …

I was going to open this piece with what I thought was a pretty dramatic sentence: “I don’t know what I’m doing here.” As in, I don’t know what I’m doing here on this earth.

This is not a backhanded way of me saying that I don’t want to be here! On the contrary, I want to live until I’m 100 years old, and I’m taking good care of myself to do so — if only to give myself lots of time to tackle the “What am I doing here?” question! To say nothing of spending quality time with my loved ones and experiencing the rest of what life has to offer.

But writers can’t be liars. And I know in my heart of hearts that “I don’t know what I’m doing here” is a disingenuous statement. Attention-grabbing, yes. But untrue.

The truth is that, deep down — very deep down — I actually do know what I’m doing here on this earth. It almost reads like a vocational mission statement: I’m here to express, through my love of writing, the beauty and wisdom in what I see and learn each day — and to do so for both my own benefit and, hopefully, the benefit of others.

That’s what I’m doing here. That’s my life purpose — one of them, at least (I believe we all have many). I’ve just been afraid to name it, claim it, embrace it, and live it. I still am. It’s easier to say “I don’t know what I’m doing here.” Except that I do.

I’m certain I’m not alone in this regard. I’m confident that, despite my usual belief that I’m the only one who thinks about this kind of stuff, many if not most of us grapple with it, in our own ways and in our own times. More importantly, I’m convinced that we actually know the answers to our own life-purpose questions, deep down — very deep down.

Maybe it’s because I’m 47 years old. Maybe it’s because I lost my wife to cancer nearly three years ago and she said to me, in her final days, “I wish people would learn something from what’s happening to me.” Maybe it’s because I’m in a wonderful new relationship with a beautiful woman who also lost her spouse, to suicide nearly two years ago, and we’re more prone than most to think about life’s meaning. Maybe it’s because I want our four kids to be prepared when they inevitably stare down this same question: “What am I here to do?”

Whatever the reason(s), I just have to say something about purpose, my own and that of others: It exists. It matters, perhaps more than anything else in life. It’s unique to us because it is made up of a unique blend of purposes. And we all probably have a better sense of it than we care to admit. It’s something to be uncovered, not discovered. We just have to name it, claim it, embrace it, and then live it. Baby step by baby step if necessary.

This is my first step.

Walk with me.

It’s time for me to push the “Publish” button. If you’re reading this, you’ll know I succeeded.

And so will I.

Peter Vogt

I’m a writer. An essayist, to be more exact. I tell stories here—true stories, from my own life, in hopes they will make a positive difference in yours.

I share laughs and tears, insights and observations, frustrations and realizations, relying all the while on the storytelling wisdom of Julia Cameron, author of The Right to Write.

It is a great paradox that the more personal, focused, and specific your writing becomes, the more universally it communicates.