Seeing Through The Fog And Finding Purpose
Recently, as in all of 2022, I’ve been having some deep internal thoughts. Or at least what I feel is deep to me. I question everything I do and what I do and why I do it and it has led me to a weird spot. A spot where I realize I have no idea what I’m doing.
This sounds weird, I know but I read a long time ago that no one knows what they are doing or what is happening and that we’re all winging it. Obviously, that line stuck with me but I didn’t take it seriously until now.
This hit me the hardest when I was trying to think about what I wanted to do in 2022. What goals I had and how I wanted to get there. I worked on this for weeks but everything I came up with didn’t excite me and for the most part, I thought was too shallow. They had no deeper meaning and didn’t drive my purpose.
But wait a second… what is my purpose? Like most of you probably reading this I have no idea.
Purpose is weird. We all want to believe we were put on this earth for a reason but how many of us actually find that reason? Do we have to consciously go out of our way to search for it? Or as we try new things will a eureka moment hit us that will make us realize “That’s why I’m here, this is what I want to do with my life!”. It’s an interesting thought experiment and to be honest it also might be a giant waste of time because what if our purpose is just a made-up thing by humans?
Back to my goals for 2022. These usually consist of things that I think will make me better as a person. Every year they steer more and more towards things that make me happier and away from things that I think society wants me to do to make them happy. This has been a good thing. For example, I always set a goal to read a certain number of books per year.
Why?
Well, because I was under the impression that the more books you read the smarter you are.
Looking back this was a dumb thought and I can happily report I never once hit those reading goals.
So this year I went through each goal I had and made sure it did a couple of things:
- It was something I wanted to actually do
- It was realistic for me
- If completled I know that the outcome would make ME happy
When I put these things together what does that look like for me? One example is to climb five 14,000 foot peaks this year. It’s a hobby I picked up years ago and it brings me so much fulfillment every time I complete one. It’s a feeling that I don’t experience anywhere else so let’s add more of that into my life.
Another is doing one thing a month for a friend and not expecting anything in return. Seems like an easy one but I want to make sure I’m going out of my way to do it because I want to be the person my friends can count on.
While we’re on the friend’s theme I want to build deeper relationships with those friends. We all have good friends, friends, associates, and people we know. The labels you put on them might be different but you get my point. I want to put more focus on my good friends and have tough conversations and get to know each other on a deeper level. Having a large friend group doesn’t excite me anymore. Having a small, yet great, friend group is something that I desire in my life.
How does this all tie together?
To be frank, I’m just on a rambling spree with this post. Trying to get all of the things in my head on paper but my purpose and my goals are tied together. I don’t think that my purpose will just drop into my lap In fact, I don’t think most of us will ever find our purpose. If that’s true then I’m going to take the other side of the bet and put my time and energy into the things that excite me in life and that are things that bring me fulfillment and the relationships I have with people.
There’s a ton more that I have in my head on this topic. I haven’t even started on work/life balance, making content online (which I’ve done for almost 5 years now), and other things in society but we’ll save those for another post.
Hopefully, this post make you reflect on what you do every day and why. It’s something I don’t think enough people think about this and instead move through life like an empty shell until life no longer exists. That’s something I’m not interested in.
Thanks for reading.