PURPOSE

« As I am floating in the ocean, I look up to the sky, wondering how it feels to be on the top. Everything must be looking so small from that perspective. So irrelevant. My whole being doesn’t matter to this world. I look around, amazed by the fact that even though I see so much, I don’t know nothing about this world. Not for sure. I take a deep breath and look into myself. Patterns of informations I’ve formed myself to a picture that makes sense to me. A picture that may look crazy to you, but for me, it’s a visualisation of my whole life. How things work, what things mean. It’s a purpose I’ve created myself. And it matters to nobody but to me. »

Whats your purpose?

Maybe you are one of the people that struggles a lot with defining your purpose, or maybe, you don’t, at all. The good news is, nobody cares, except for you. Yes, that’s GOOD news. It means that nobody really cares what you’re actually doing with your life. Your closest people may care about how you feel about what you’re doing. And if your parents care about what you’re actually doing (Like when they tell you to become a doctor rather than an artist), it’s probably because they think you would be happier, healthier or wealthier in the future by following their suggestion. It’s never really about what you do, it’s about why you do it. And the answer to that question is always based on a feeling. At the end of the day, it’s always the feeling that we chase. We want things because we think it will make us happy. Without feeling, nothing makes sense to us. Feelings bring us into action, not rational thoughts and plans. You can plan everything into the most specific details, write it down, draw it on a canvas and spray it on the wall of your neighbours’ house. But if you never get into action, you will miss the feeling that you experience when you dive into the process and get it done. That feeling is called purpose. Without doing, there is no purpose. So just do it. (Wow, Nike actually thought some things through when they created their slogan).

Your purpose isn’t a rational plan which makes sense to everybody else. Purpose is a feeling. And even more importantly, it’s a feeling you can’t find. It’s not something you search for. Purpose is something you create. And this is where all the fun begins.

One of the most important questions in life is simple: Why? If you start randomly asking yourself that question in your everyday life, while going to work, eating spaghetti or brushing your teeth for example, you will get closer to this purpose thing. The idea of this – let’s call it a game – is that you dive deeper into the question. You won’t be able to create a purpose by asking yourself: « Why am I going to work? » and answering it with « to make money » and go on with your life. You need to ask more. You need answers to build a foundation. This foundation it going to be your framework. And if your framework is already loose or weak, your building won’t last. It will collapse eventually. So what is it that you need to build a lasting framework? What is the base of this whole construction and therefore the most important component of it? Well, that’s your choice.

What is supposed to be the most important component of your purpose? What will influence every decision you will make in the future? What is supposed to be the guide on the journey of life? Whatever it is, it’s what you call your values.

Your values have a big impact on your life. They define your habits, your goals, your lifestyle. They define your thoughts and actions. They define who you are. Values are something we choose to focus on, they are the base of your judgement and they also define to a certain extent how we think the world works. Our values aren’t always a conscious choice, sometimes they develop over time without us noticing. But they always have a reason to be there. So you can basically ask yourself: « Why is that important to me? » and you will always find an answer. Sometimes, you will have to ask: « Why does this bother me? » or « why am I so excited about this? » to first find out that something is important to you. When we start to uncover values that sit deep inside our stomach (this is where I think is the soul), we start to notice that not all our values are good. Some of them, we may define as bad, or maybe we just don’t agree with them. « How can I value something if don’t agree with it? » you may ask. You can’t choose wether you agree with something or not if you don’t see what it even is about, right? So you just don’t make a choice. So the values you don’t see, they can also stay there, without you noticing it. These values may be opinions from other people or based on toxic experiences you’ve made in the past. There is a lot happening in our minds that we don’t see. Until we open our eyes.

You build your castle, based on your values. You walk inside, exploring this new space. You furnish your new home with your habits and create your own way of living. At night, demons come hunt your house and leave their marks, without you noticing, until you clean your house again. You can’t remove the marks, so you choose to accept them as a piece of your home, just like everything you’ve ever added yourself. In the morning, when you leave the house, you already know that you will come back. Sometimes, you don’t know for how long you will be gone, but you know for sure that you will always come back. Always.