Thousand Reflections: Life with a Purpose or Purposes with a life?
Issue #7
About Thousand Reflections: Thousand Network is full of people from all walks of life and background. Here, we try to tap into this collective wisdom by offering a prompt every week and sourcing short responses from the members.
This Week’s Prompt:
We all feel the urge to live a purposeful life, do things that matter and try our best to make a dent in this ever expanding universe. But is it better to have life with a purpose or many purposes with a life?
With the unification vibe of the day, we tend to think that because our lives are so short, we should have only one unique purpose and all our activities should correspond towards that.
But is it true that we have only one purpose? Or many purposes with a life?
Much like last week’s prompt, I think the “one purpose life” is a trap. If you only have one purpose, then you must find it, much like if you only have one soulmate, then you must find them — and most importantly, you must not make the wrong decision.
But the world is wide and life varied. What is important now may not be important a year from now, even next week. If everything must have meaning, we lose these in between moments, moments which I believe are the heart of life, not the stuffing.
Let life be meaningful — not with a cause or an extra verb or a because. Just simply this: it happens, and you are there to live it. Let life be purposeful — purposeful in all of its facets, contradictory as they can be. Make clear choices, but don’t be afraid to let them change as you, and your purpose, evolves.
“Man’s search for meaning” by Viktor Frankl comes to mind. Purpose develops over the course of your life as you become increasingly aware of your core values. Core values aren’t easy to find and indeed more difficult to sharpen. It’s fair to test multiple purposes and settle on those that ring true to you. Perhaps that’s the secret to one’s identity and mission in life?
Core values and sole purpose are two things I think are quite valuable in my life.
Core values for me are like rules that we have created for ourselves. We may not know if they are right or wrong, perfect or imperfect, but we always stand for those values, even in the worst possible conditions.
We might have different purposes throughout our lives at different stages. Our priorities in our twenties might change a lot with our priorities in our forties but I strongly believe there is some inner purpose that never changes and all our activities during this period evolve around this purpose.
Saying more about purpose, we may think, who doesn’t want to be rich and live a happily ever after life with loving family and friends ? But sole purpose is not just about that, its about that how you want to be remembered in between your kith and kin and how you create a sense of fulfillment in yourself. Those are your sole purposes for lifetime, which I duly believe.
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