How to find your purpose in life?

[TheLonelySkeptic]

My entire life I've told myself I was a writer. I think it spawned from a "poem" I wrote when I was 6 or so. My grandpa told me it was good (grandpas are supposed to say that), and I turned into Kevin the Writer. Heh. Here, fourteen years later, my writing doesn't stand out from anyone else's and the most I've ever written is a shitty outline that I posted on this forum xD. It's like all I thought I was has been unraveling before me, but I'm not willing to see it.

I keep pressing on, telling myself I have potential xD. Maybe someday, if I ever do write something, I'll look back on my attitude now and laugh. But it has to happen first, and at this rate. . .

 

[LonelyDragon]

I've discovered over the years that my purpose in life is to make others feel better about themselves when they look at me and say "I'm glad I'm not him."

 

[Bella]

I wish there was a universal list of steps to follow in order to determine your life's purpose. Something simple, like a checklist. You'd put checks in boxes describing traits you possessed and it would bring you to the desirable, attainable purpose for your life.

Do most people just speculate/assume that their purpose is directly related to their talents/strengths?

 

[Van Hooligan X]

don't think mine has a purpose now, doesn't matter though. guess it means i can do whatever i want (h) *lays down on my bed for 40 years*

 

[Brian]

I always admired people who had a specific dream since their early childhood and worked to achieve it. Do you have a purpose? If so, how does one find it?

My dream as a child was to be a game designer. But I sort of lost interest in that.

Then for a while, I didn't know what I wanted to be. But I decided I wanted to be a pilot.

But it was too expensive to be a pilot, only to be plopped in to such an awful job market with questionable job stability (now-a-days, anyway).

But in my time researching pilot jobs I started reading about the fire pilots. The ones that make retardant drops and the like, fighting wildland fires. Holy honeysuckle did that look like a blast, and you got to work with such classic aircraft.

But you have to be an experienced pilot to do that, and it's a very difficult job to get. You sort of have to know someone.

But from there I read about Wildland Firefighters. Hey, that looked kickass and paid alright. And you can't beat having the winter off. But from there I started reading up on 'city' firemen. I became infatuated with the challenging, ever dynamic nature of the work; the camaraderie, etc. And now I'm pursuing that.

So I guess my purpose is to help Grandpa get back in bed at 3 AM, assure the crazy people who live on the hill that the Nazis are, in fact, -not- pumping gas in to their home, and to extinguish the dumpsters near the bar every time some tweaker decides to burn his meth lab in them. Then every now and then some drunk ****** plows his car in to a tree and we have to go make sure the tree's alright.

Now I just have to get to the part where someone pays me to do all that.


But, I don't really think anyone has a set purpose in life. We just acquire skills and tendencies and preferences that make us pursue a given path. If I'd paid more attention in certain classes in school, I may have decided to be a doctor instead, or to go ahead with flight training. I may have gone on to be a lawyer if I hadn't dropped out. But I didn't. I don't regret it, though. I love what I do. It won't pay me as much as a lawyer makes, and it's dangerous. By the time I'm done and out of it it could very well have taken it's toll on me. But then again, I might still have a full head of hair...whereas a lawyer might not. And I won't have any fancy boats or anything like that as a result of my work, but I'll have lots of great memories and stories. ...Not that I'd mind having a fancy boat, too.

And by the same token, there's other things I could pursue right now and be happy with. I could go become a licensed stock broker if I decided to and wanted to take the classes. But that comes back to the full head of hair thing.

But then...I guess some people never really make anything out of themselves because they don't try. I had a friend who dropped out of school and played video games all the time, got involved in drugs. Now he's trying to make a living as a rapper. I've heard his beats...he'll be working at the pizza place when he's 50. And I can point out 10 people a day who are all just like he is. As sad as it is, I love those people, because they mean more opportunity for those who choose to try.

Similarly, some people never pursue anything interesting, but they still work a good job. An older friend of mine spent his career working in a lumber mill. It wasn't interesting, but it paid him alright. Now he's pretty comfortably retired. And even if it's not a glamorous job, you still have to admit that without people like him, we'd lack our most basic of building materials. And besides, he found his enjoyment elsewhere in life. And he was never a burden to society.


I guess I'm rambling. I don't know the answer to 'How to find your purpose'...the best I can say is just do what you like, find something your interested in. Go for the gusto, and along the way find a backup plan. But be realistic. I'd love to be a writer. I have lots of good story ideas and I'm not -bad- at writing. But I'm also not -good- enough at it to chance having to make a living from it. We have to be honest with ourselves: Are we -good enough- to feed ourselves with this, or should we be content to have it as a hobby?

 

[Haineko]

I wish things were just as Bella says. A simple checklist, that when filled with stuff about you just said something along the line of:

"Your true purpose in life is to travel everywhere and know a lot
of different realities, cultures and ways of living."

or something like that, but there is not. That being said, I join
the ranks of those who pretty much have no purpose in life...
as I have said before, I have no intelligence, interesting skills,
something that makes me unique...there is nothing I can share
with myself, let alone the rest of the world. My life is just a
neverending routine, in which my brain is getting increasingly
number because it is always the same thing...myself trying to
escape reality until the end of the day, then repeating the same
thing every ******* day.

This has lead me to asking myself whether my life even has a purpose at all, or if it is just condemned to being utterly meaningless through the years to come. I´ve even started to believe that my only purpose is to make others look better in comparison to me, since everybody can shine by being next (and therefore compared) to someone who pretty much fails at anything and everything. That way, as lonely dragon said, people can look at me and say: "Holy crap, I am glad I´m not him" or something along the lines of "Hey, there IS someone who is even worse off than me" but I just don´t know, and it´s just driving me crazy. Hope we can find a purpose soon, whatever it is...

Cheers =)

 

[Brian]

I think we need to keep in mind that having a 'purpose' doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be glamorous or high-profile. It's what you make of it, no matter what. Even if that means spending your working life installing windows or doing forest maintenance, and enjoying your self in your off time.

It might not be saving the whales or writing the next big movie script, but it's still your lot in life, and it -is- meaningful.

And when you think about it, those low profile jobs can have a pretty big impact.

Most people won't see our work crew going through a patch of Idaho forest land cutting out the dead, scraggly, tiny little trees and clearing out the chokingly thick brush. They won't smell our burn piles or hear the chipper roar as it spits out another Bull Pine. And they won't feel the bee stings as we curse the world and run away like little girly men. Even if they did see us working, what do they care?

But in fifteen, twenty years when the trees we left are big and healthy, and there's a good overstory for the next generation of trees...when kids walk the trail through that patch we cleared, when a couple carves their names in to that same Red Fir that sheltered those ******* hornets that got us, well that's the difference we made. And it don't matter whether or not they realize it. All that matters is that they're enjoying it.

And when the newer trees in that patch get big, and the older trees get logged because they're ready, our impact lingers still. We've helped put money in the pocket of a logger down on his luck. And it's because we came through that those trees survived to be suitable lumber to build a nice house for someone...possibly even a Habitat for Humanity project.

All that because a bunch of dumb nobodies came and did some work that no one will ever know about.

I dunno about you but to me that seems like at least an equally worthwhile purpose in life to making a film or something. And the same can be applied to just about any other 'worthless' endeavor.