The purpose of life is a life of purpose
Billions of people live their lives daily, but only a few have any sense of purpose or ideals that drive them. And that can be one of the biggest issues many are facing. If you are without a purpose, you have no wheels, you just go with the flow, which can be a problem not only for you but for other people you deal with. Life seems like a puzzle with missing pieces. You form plans and change them, you choose one path then another, you try to find the right partner and career, hoping that you’ve made the right decision and that it will all work out. At some point, you ask yourself the central question: What is the purpose of my life?
American humorist Leo Rosten pronounced that the purpose of life is, above all, to matter; to count; to stand for something, to have made some difference that you lived at all. On the other hand, Dan Millan, author of 17 books read by millions in 29 languages has identified the four main purposes of life in his new tome, The Four Purposes of Life. It helps you seek deeper insight into your life, especially if you are at a crossroads, facing a challenge or change situation, when past approaches no longer work.?
1. Learning life’s lessons. The universe is a perfect school, and daily life is the classroom. You grow through stretching and challenges. You achieve great things in each of these 12 subject areas in life’s core curriculum:
Foundations of self-worth: getting out of your own way. This helps you to shift from holding up only a thimble and saying, “Yes! Thank you!” Realizing your innate worth expands your horizons and opens you to a larger life.
Roots of will: the practice of self-discipline. Willpower isn’t a mysterious force that descends on us from above; rather, it is an innate power within you, waiting to be applied. You do so every time you accomplish a task despite a lack of motivation. As your skills and understanding improve, appreciate that your life will be shaped largely by what you do each day, whether or not you feel like doing it.
Well-being: approaches to health and vitality. While genetics plays a powerful role in health and longevity, you have wiggle room — it’s called lifestyle or daily choices. This course, over time and through your own experience, teaches the wisdom of regular, moderate exercise, a balanced diet, and sufficient rest.
Money and values: establishing stability and sufficiency. It is a form of energy that only makes you more of who you already are. It can bind you or free you, depending on how you manage it. Learn the way to create sufficiency and stability, leading to the deep satisfaction of philanthropy. As the Arabic proverb goes, “If you have much, give of your wealth; if you have little, give of your heart.”
Exploring the mind: the nature of your inner world. Understand the illusory nature of your subjective mind. Lao-Tzu advised, “As soon as you have a thought, laugh at it,” because reality is not what you think. You perceive the world through a window colored by beliefs, interpretations, and associations. Aim not to struggle with random thoughts but to transcend them in the present moment, where no thoughts exist, only awareness. Your mind’s liberation awaits, not in some imagined future, but here and now.
Intuition: accessing subconscious guidance. Daily life teaches you the value of trusting intuitive messages and, in the words of Zen sword master Taisen Deshimaru, learning “to think with the whole body. Nearly all scientific discoveries come from creative flashes of intuitive insight, later tested and verified using the scientific method.
The nature of feelings: achieving emotional freedom. Life reveals that you have more control over your behavior than you do over transient emotions or thoughts. This realization helps you liberate your life from reactive or confused soap operas and establish stable, mature, and responsible behavior.
Fundamentals of courage: confronting fear. Tackle the primal emotion of fear, which can lead to paralysis or power, and can end a life or save it. Fear can warn you of genuine danger; it can move you to prepare well, take precautions, or avoid a situation. Courage is not the absence of fear but the conquering of it. Heroes feel the same fear as cowards; they just respond differently.
Knowing yourself: finding wholeness in the shadows. In childhood, your power and charm come from authenticity — your actions are undiluted by subterfuge or hidden agendas. But as the years pass, you learn to tell social lies and use pretense to please or placate others while disowning the disapproved-of parts of your psyche. Embrace the full scope of your humanity, and it will open the way to genuine growth and transformation.
Your sexual life: understanding the pleasure principle. Your drive for sexual intimacy is as natural as thundershowers or the changing seasons. But if you suppress or exploit your sexual energy, you create obsessions, compulsions, and guilty secrets. You have to observe, accept, enjoy, and channel sexual-creative energy rather than merely indulging or denying it. Go beyond your physical drives and explore your areas of awareness, balance, trust, openness, honesty, and the courage to achieve true intimacy.
The mastery of love: awakening the heart. Your life experience reveals the evolving nature of love as it changes from an emotion that happens to you, rising and falling out of your control, to an art you can learn — from something you receive to something you give. As you mature, this practice of love liberates you from dependence on the changing tides of emotion. You gain the capacity to show loving kindness to others even when you don’t like it.
Service and meaning: completing the circle of life. It is a form of yoga, a catalyst of friendship, an affirmation of your common humanity. Even the smallest gesture of self-sacrifice — giving of our time, energy or attention — shifts your focus from “What’s in it for me?” to “What’s for the highest good of all concerned?”
2. Finding your career and calling. Martin Luther King Jr. proclaimed, “Whatever your life work, do it well. Do it so well that no one else could do it better. If it falls on your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, like Shakespeare wrote poetry, like Beethoven composed music; sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say, ‘Here lived a great street sweeper.” Persist. Stand up for yourself. Lead by example. Practice the quiet courage of everyday life. Your work — the service you provide, no matter how humble it may be — connects you to the larger community. So never take your work, or yourself, for granted. “Small acts of caring can turn a life around,” author Leo Buscaglia underscored. One life you will turn around, through career and calling, is your own. And as Oprah Winfrey said, “You have a sacred calling; the question is, will you take the time to heed that call? Will you blaze your own path? You are the author of your own life. Don’t let another define it for you. Real power comes by doing what you are meant to be doing, and doing it well.”
3. Discover your path as you make your way towards the peaks of your potential. Know and embrace wherever your path will guide you — you can’t lose your way. Because wherever you step, the path will appear beneath your feet. The way may twist and turn, and obstacles will appear as you continue onward and upward. But as an old mentor reminded me more than once, “the way creates the warrior” — and the climb itself develops the capacity to complete the journey. And the higher you climb, the better the view. C. G. Jung said, “The shoe that fits one person pinches another, there is no recipe for living that suits all cases. Each of us carries our own life-plan, which cannot be superseded by any other.”
4. Paying attention to this arising moment. This is a lifelong practice that integrates and distills the other three purposes into one manageable moment at a time. Calling forth all you have learned on your journey, you can transform everyday life into a path of personal evolution and infuse each moment with new meaning and purpose. Attend to this moment with each breath. And in random moments, silently ask yourself, “ What is my purpose in this arising moment?” Then do whatever needs to be done, in a wondrous and changing parade of purposes that shape the story of your life, and all of our lives. Yamamoto Tsunetomo, author of Hagakure The Book of the Samurai, wrote, “There is surely nothing other than the single purpose of the present moment. A person’s life is a succession of moment after moment. When one fully understands the present moment, there will be nothing else to do and nothing else to pursue.”
The Four Purposes of Life offers a great dive into self-knowledge, insight and wisdom. It brought to life Robert Byrne’s musing, “The purpose of life is a life of purpose.” Surely, the seeds planted in this book will bear fruit for years to come.
* * *
Email bongosorio@gmail.com for comments, questions or suggestions. Thank you for communicating. The Four Purposes Of Life is available at National Book Store.
