35. A SENSE OF PURPOSE
What I am living for and what I am dying for are the same question.
- Margaret Atwood
The birth of my second daughter changed my life. Not because her birth was in any way different from my first daughter, but because the second time around I allowed myself to take six months of parental leave where I got to know the people I’d helped create and for whom I was responsible. When I went back to my job and acquainted myself with days of leaving home while everyone else was asleep and getting home when the girls were going to bed, I realized my focus had changed, and that I was going to have to change also, because being a soldier had become a job.
Now, deciding to change is like orienteering; to get anywhere, we need to have an idea about where we’re going. With map and compass, locating a destination is easy. We either aim for a place we can see, or we find one on the map and take our bearing from there. In both cases, the destination is our focus, it is our why.
It’s not quite as simple when it comes to changing ourselves because we might not know what the destination looks like. When we add in all the external and internal obstacles to change, the self-defeating behaviors we’ll use against ourselves without even being aware of them, it’s no wonder many people give up on their resolutions. That’s why it’s so important to understand why we’re embarking on that change, because it gives us a sense of purpose that will sustain us through periods of uncertainty and frustration.
There are a lot of different ways to serve others, any of which could provide meaning. There are traditional service professions, like medicine, law enforcement, or the military. Then there’s public service, which includes everything from teaching to wildlife management to public office. There are different types of community service and volunteer engagement and on top of all of this are ways to integrate climate solutions, like figuring out how to implement climate-friendly solutions into the business practices at our local jobs. Serving others might not even be a trade or a profession so much as a general way to live our lives, like being willing to discuss with neighbors how to make our communities more sustainable.
With all that said, I’d offer that the exact destination of how we choose to serve others doesn’t matter. I’d even suggest that the routes we take to get to those destinations don’t matter either. There are no right or wrong ways. There’s only the way that we take, the way that puts the good of the many ahead of the good of the few, because that’s the important thing to focus on, the decision that the fruits of our labors will be dedicated to others as opposed to ourselves. That’s our destination, our fixed point of navigation, chosen out of a desire to help society become more resilient. Once we decide that, we’re most of the way there. The difficult part will be to keep going, to keep this focus in our minds. So don’t over think it. In the words of author Seth Godin, “You don’t need more time, you just need to decide1.”
That said, if, after all this, you still feel you need a more defined destination, an actual job or activity, then ask yourself the following question to get started:
What in your life do you believe in so strongly that you would die for? Because if you know that, then you also know what’s important enough to live for.
For me, it works like this. I think of my daughters, and what Spider-man said to children everywhere from the wreckage of the World Trade Center in a post-9/11 world:
“Perhaps we simply tell them that we love them, and that we will protect them. That we would give our lives for theirs and do it gladly, so great is the burden of our love2.”
And so because I know what I’d die for, I also know what I will live for, which is to make the world a better place for my daughters.
Seth Godin, “You don’t need more time,” Seth’s Blog, February 9, 2011, https://seths.blog/2011/02/you-dont-need-more-time/, accessed 8 Apr 2020.
J. Michael Straczynski (w), John Romita Jr. (p), Scott Hanna (i) and Dan Kemp (c), ‘Stand Tall,’ The Amazing Spider-Man, Vol 2(36), November 14, 2001, Marvel Comics.