The Truth Behind Finding Your Purpose
Exhausted from trying to find your purpose?
What better way to get stoked on life than watching an intense sports documentary like Free Solo. This film is centered around Alex Honnold climbing without ropes the gargantuan wall that is El Capitan, but what stood out to me is the emphasis on his relationship with Sanni.
They were not only telling a story about defeating the odds/doing the impossible, but about settling down, caring for someone so dearly that it changes how you go about life. There is one scene in the film that just stuck to me. More than Honnold free soloing the exposed part of El Cap.
Alex lays out the differences between Sanni and him: “For Sanni, the point of life is happiness- to be with people that make you feel fulfilled, to have a good time.” Nothing wrong with that, right? There’s no wrong in feeling comfortable and secure, but he makes a point in the next line:
“The thing is anybody can be happy and cozy…Nobody achieves anything great because they’re happy and cozy”.
He’s got a point and a really good one at that. When was the last time you went through no struggle, no strife, and came out, in the end, saying, “Wow, I learned so much and gained more understanding about myself”? Most likely, never.
The first word that popped into my head as I analyzed his words was purpose. How many times have you heard a millennial say they are going to South Asia to discover their purpose? I am beginning to think that most young people’s purpose in life is to find purpose. Kind of sounds exhausting if you give yourself the time to process that idea. When Alex Honnold said that line in Free Solo, I asked myself, “Am I actually doing hard things that will make an impact?”.
I lived most of my life as a high-level athlete, where performance was the center of my being. I can’t tell you how fulfilling it was for little girls to ask for my pictures, autographs, and come to me after games affirming how much they looked up to me.
Sounds like I had a very fulfilling purpose in life. What I came to realize a year after tearing my ACL was that this impact, in this industry/world, is temporary. I was doing hard things, physically and mentally challenging tasks every day, but my “purpose” got lost in my performance.
Someone once told me to search for truth not purpose. Scratch purpose! What is the truth I am going to follow that dictates what I do in life? I don’t want to be cozy, but I don’t want to be performing for something that is finite, that is going to die. Whether you get down on your knees or cross your legs or take a walk, something is going to come up in those intimate sessions. It is a hard, thought-provoking search, but I guarantee you it will be worth giving time to.
Finding your purpose is simple: Your purpose is to live, but what are you going to live by. That is your truth, and that is what is most valuable.
© Maddy Roh
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.
