It seems interesting that purpose is such a rare item in the consciousness of most of the people I meet.  In growing up, for the majority of my peers, it seems not to have been a valueless question, but rather one that went un-asked.

Again and again I meet people who have no comprehension of purpose.  If asked they will generally reflect their purpose as being the fulfillment of someone else’s needs and expectations.  That is not purpose! It may be considered an obligation or duty.  It could be some kind of personal debt incurred, but it is not a purpose.  And people so bound will sooner or later rebel.

To know our purpose demands of us a level of action.  To realize a purpose and not act upon it is tantamount to suicide.  To have a purpose and ignore it, deny it, push it away will lead us to depression, anxiety, or worse even than that, to emptiness.

We all have a purpose, every one of us.  We all have something of ourselves to give; big or small it is there and it is important.  Yet our society has forgotten how to discover that individual purpose. 

At one time the realization or discovery of that purpose was the single most important act in a person’s life.  It was tied closely to the right of passage into adulthood.  Today, for most of us it has been replaced by a watered down facsimile called graduation.

The big question of graduates is usually something like: “So what are you going to do now?  In the majority of cases twelve years of schooling went by with no one even raising the question of purpose.  For most young adults the closest they will come to discovering a purpose is a statement that starts with: “You must….”  Sometimes the truly subtle manipulator will express genuine concern such as I have at times layered onto my children.  Comments that inevitably start with something like you ‘should’, ‘need to’ or ‘can’t’.

The fortunate ones who actually stumble upon their purpose while in high school usually go on to become very successful.  But it isn’t by design it’s by default.  And those who do not discover their purpose fail by default not design. 

Successful people living their purpose teach their children through example the importance of purpose; they teach by default.  The lost and confused can only teach their children to be lost and confused; that is all they know, it is their default. 

Yet purpose is a need within every individual and a person who lives daily weekly and yearly to fulfill an obligation will eventually rebel.  And in the ensuing confusion all the good things regularly get tossed out with the ‘bad’ things.  Jobs and friends are discarded, relationships are lost, children become parentless; the hallmark of lives of freedom lacking in purpose.  The situation runs rampant in our world, compounded with every victim.