Purpose
Why am I here? I woke up this morning asking myself that again. It’s not a new question. It’s one I’ve been asking now and then, for as long as I can remember.
The answer, I thought when I was younger, was supposed to be grand. Save the world. Go hard or go home. Get rich or die tryin’.
I spent years chasing it. I read the books. Followed the advice. I made the plans. I told myself that if I just worked harder, thought bigger, committed more fully to whatever the next version of myself was supposed to be, I’d finally land somewhere that felt like success.
I never materialized. What I found instead was exhaustion, and a secret shame at my own ordinariness — the growing suspicion that the problem wasn’t the plan but the person trying to follow it.
That kind of thinking sucked me down one too many rabbit holes. It left me unable to see the uncomplicated good already right in front of me.
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I’ve tried to live my life in a way that helps rather than harms, that seeks consequences for guidance rather than for personal gain. And chasing some great, self-important mission feels at odds with what any honest sense of virtue asks of me.
Why can’t one’s purpose be simple? Subtle. Small.
Not a wave or a tsunami, but something tiny. Almost nonexistent, yet not insignificant.
A drop in the vast ocean of existence. A small part of someone else’s ripple. A single kindness disappearing into a larger current, I may never see.
I like to think of life not as a container holding a single purpose or grand act.
I’d prefer not a container at all, but a stream—a series of billions upon billions of tiny thoughts and actions, passing from person to person, cascading through time and space.
What if not knowing your purpose in life is not a failure, but a kind of health—a way of staying awake to what is actually here rather than what you’d wish?
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What if I’m meant just to live a simple life—no wealth, no fame, no legacy?
To take from this world as little as possible. To make as small a mark as possible. To be invisible, save to a few—like a gentle, early-morning rain falling on a sleeping world.
Unseen.
What if my purpose is simply being here for her?
Not forcing. Not demanding. Not expecting.
Is that not enough purpose for one life?
#Liminality #Spirituality #Mysticism
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