Find some way to make it suit your purposes

The project of purpose is our best hope for not going completely off the rails.

How else are we supposed to grasp the full extent of this existential nightmare we call life on earth?

The word project is critical here, because purpose is a complicated journey with many iterations. Defining and practicing it takes time, patience, and hardest of all, faith.

Luckily, there is no right or wrong way to do it, and there is no committee to judge whether or not our purpose is worthy enough to matter. Our purpose has meaning because we decide it does. Period.

Nepo writes in his lovely book of awakening meditations that purpose is that which we most passionately are when we pay attention to our deepest selves.

That’s an ideal place to start. Each of can define our own personal sense of purpose in a way that both inspires us, but also makes us a little nervous. Some organizing principle for daily living that, when we think about it or announce it to others, makes us feel an internal prick, a small subterranean twinge of aliveness.

The reason this slight edge is so important to our project of purpose is, it keeps moving our story forward. We increase our existential strength by articulating our life purpose. We provide ourselves with more motivational energy when we frame activities as life purpose choices.

It may feel a bit woo woo and grandiose, but sometimes it’s the only way to galvanize ourselves.

Besides, if our purpose keeps the wolf of panic away from the door, who cares if it sounds a bit lofty? Our serenity is more important than other people’s perception of our spirituality.

How can you find some way to make things suit your life purposes?