Your Purpose
Your purpose is not to cure cancer. It is not to make a fortune, or win high office. Nor is it to save the lost, or help build a great church or enterprise, or become world famous. Your purpose is not to earn a degree or many. It isn’t to marry well or raise great kids. Being a fantastic grandparent, parent, son, daughter or friend is not your purpose either.
All of these are great aspirations, but whether or not you achieve any or all of them will not, in the end, be the reason you were born.[1]
Your purpose is to live right now, in the present, in order to do the next good thing. And while you are doing that next good thing? Continue to live right now.
It might be to change a diaper, do the laundry, pay the bills, mow the lawn, write a note, call a friend, put in an honest day’s work, or just smile at your caregiver.
Q: But how in the world can you know what the next right thing is?
A: Have you thought about asking?
Q: But what if I don’t hear an answer?
A: Well then, the choice is yours to start and then trust your day to be guided by an invisible hand. This is what makes a bedtime journal or review such a powerful still point habit.
Over time, perhaps you will do some great thing, but what will likely have more of a lasting impact on you as well as the world will be how you managed each day as it came to you — how well you displayed grace and gratitude in even the most mundane, frustrating and difficult times.
[1] The first question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism is: What is the chief end of man? You might consider looking up the answer.
Ben, I think Eliot would call that answer the core of the dance. It is everything.