What's Your Purpose

Purpose. We all need it. Some people make their own, and others follow a lead, but the real question is what happens when the purpose you have been carrying is suddenly gone. Do you crawl into a ball, or do you go looking for a new one?

I do a little of both, if I am being honest. But mostly, when I lose a purpose, I start hunting for the next one.

When the Purpose You Had Disappears

Most of us tie our sense of purpose to something specific. A job, a role, a project, a season of life. That works right up until the thing we tied it to is gone, and then we are left standing there wondering what we are for.

I don't think that is the problem people assume it is. It is uncomfortable, no question. But it is also the exact moment that pushes you to find the next thing, and the next thing is often better than the one you lost, because you choose it with a little more wisdom than you had the first time around. Losing a purpose and finding a purpose tend to be the same event, just viewed from different ends.

The Path Was Not a Straight Line

Mine certainly wasn't.

When I was younger, I enjoyed learning, but I never wanted to just sit still and do it. I spent years in a classroom studying historic preservation, only to realize that what I really wanted was to go out into the field and learn even more, with my hands on the actual work. Reading about how a building was put together is one thing. Standing inside it, taking it apart, and putting it back together the right way, is another thing entirely. That was where the learning finally felt like mine, and where the craft trades stopped being a subject and became a purpose.

The People You Meet Along the Way

What I did not expect was the people.

No matter what path I took, I kept meeting others who had come from completely different places and somehow ended up in the same strange and wonderful corner of the world. We share a passion that comes from the thrill of making something. Most of what we build is functional, the kind of work a building actually needs. But every now and then, a piece of it exists for no reason other than that it is beautiful.

Either way, it is a shared purpose, and there is a particular kind of joy in being surrounded by people who feel the same way about the work that you do.

What's Worth Chasing

That, I think, is the thing worth chasing. Not a job, and not a title, but a purpose that puts something good and lasting into the world, surrounded by people who care about it as much as you do.

So if your purpose has gone quiet lately, I wouldn't worry too much. Go looking. The next one is out there, and it might turn out to be the one you were meant to find all along.