The P Word

I do not have a purpose. And most of the time, I feel like I'm the only one. The only one who has spent years trying to find it, with no luck. A fact that feeds right into my "there's something wrong with me" dialogue.

But what if my search for Purpose is the actual problem, not me. What if I am one of those people who just doesn't have one. Like 20/20 vision. I don't have that and that fact doesn't give me heart palpitations if someone asks me about it. I don't have my own private plane (although I would like to), or the ability to hit a golf ball, or a photographic memory. None of which give me even the slightest amount of grief.

There are lots of things I don't have. But the P word, or the lack of it, tends to send me into a dark hole from which there is no return.

I used to have a purpose, although I would never have called it that if you'd asked me at the time. I was a mum, I raised humans. I am still a mum but they tend to be doing all the raising themselves now, of themselves and their own kids. I had a job. A husband (which I still have). I played netball and tennis for fun, not to get fit or to ward off ageing and future hip replacements. I read books when I felt like it, and didn't give a shit if I went years without consuming more than the tv guide (no internet back then). And I am a literature major and self-confessed book nerd from way back. I'm thinking now I shouldn't have said that about the lit major, because you might have unrealistic expectations about what that means about my ability to string words together. Okay, I am letting that go.

Anyway, my purpose wasn't this gigantic thing. I just did what I did, in the moment. If I wanted to change jobs, I did that. If I wanted to try something completely different career wise, I did that. If I wanted to start a new business, yep, I did that too. If I wanted to write, I wrote. If I didn't, so what. I didn't spend even a single second thinking about what I was put on this earth to do, what my true purpose was (because of course there is only ONE true purpose). Little old me just lived her life, showing up and figuring it out as she went along.

How did that go for me, you might be asking. Well, overall it was pretty good. It wasn't like life didn't get messy along the way. There were loads of speed bumps. I doubted myself regularly, as a mother, as a wife, as a human. But I just ignored the voice telling me that, and got on with it.

Looks like I'm not the only one who's felt this. I did a bit of googling, as you do, and discovered that researchers have actually given it a name, purpose anxiety, and found that up to 91% of people go through it at some point, the frustration, the fear, sometimes worse, that comes from not being able to find or connect with a sense of purpose. So if you've found yourself in your own dark hole with the P word written on the door, you're in good company. Am waving at you from the next hole.

Then my kids left home, and the P word moved permanently into a corner of my brain, chaining itself to the wall like a protester to a 500-year-old tree, refusing to leave until I figured out what my purpose was, chipped it in stone, and set to work getting it done. No pressure. So I did what any reasonable person would do if a protester moved into their brain. I started asking where this whole purpose thing even came from.

I don't reckon my parents cared about purpose. Born. Grow up. Live. Work. Die. That's it. When did purpose even become a thing. When did it become THE thing. The thing we define ourselves by, the thing that matters above all else. When did it stop being okay to dabble, to try new and varied things. If I want to be a pilot, why not, and if I decide six months later that I want to be a drummer instead, shouldn't I be able to go for it? Mind you, I have zero musical talent, so my neighbours can thank me for not going down that path, but that's not really my point. If I want to paint today, write next week, decorate cupcakes next month, walk the Camino the one after that, and travel to Nepal in January to do some volunteer work, why the hell not?

And if I don't want to be anything at all, then that is also my choice. Right? Maybe my purpose is simply to live, to fully live. To be in this moment, then the next, and the next, till I die.

When researchers asked people outright whether they'd found a life purpose that satisfied them, almost 40% said no. And here I am thinking I'm the only one flailing, or is it failing, when loads of people are wrestling with this exact question at any given time. We just don't talk about it. Turns out searching for your purpose is harder than not having one in the first place. The feeling that there's something wrong with you, something missing, and the mission to go find it. Maybe it's time to stop searching.

Someone once said that 'variety is the spice of life'. I'm not sure who said it, but I like it and think it should be my mantra moving forward. Instead of beating myself up for not having a purpose, I could just embrace my dabbling and my inability to settle on one thing. There are too many things left to do, and who knows what will inspire me this afternoon, let alone in a year.

What do you think?