We often ask each other, “What are your plans for today?” which really means “What are your goals to accomplish and then check off your to-do list?” Or we ask ourselves about our plans for the day. Is there another way of inquiring about short term goals? Perhaps you do that with some of the people in your life. It is in part a way of checking in, making sure our calendars are coordinated. Or it might be a very nice way of nagging someone about a job left undone for the past weeks or months.
New Year’s Resolutions are another form of goal setting. We tell ourselves, perhaps sharing it with others, that this year I am going to lose weight, save more money, spend less, or do this, that, and the other things. Psychologists tell us that often we begin straying from our goals before the end of January. That’s when we start looking for another important date, perhaps a birthday or anniversary or an important holiday, to provide us an opportunity for a ‘do over.’
Goals are important for us, but I have come to believe, they are successful only when they lead to some serious thinking about our greater purpose in life. Having a purpose or reason is more important than we realize.
Let’s say last January you set a goal of earning and saving a specific amount of money. Good. That is always a wise thing to do, but what is the purpose? Unless your late business partner was Jacob Marley and your name is E Scrooge, having an ever-larger hoard of money doesn’t bring much joy to life. After a while, the goal has lost its meaning because we don’t have a good answer for all the work. It can lead to giving up or becoming obsessed with work and money.
Having a purpose means answering the omni-present question of ‘why.’ Why am I doing this? What is its purpose? If we have no answers, at worst, then like the anonymous writer of the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes, we will start moaning, “All is vanity.” Trust me, that is the fast track to a miserable life. We end up feeling like we are simply taking up real estate and resources more than truly living.
Perhaps instead of starting with our short-term goals, we need to look at the big, challenging, and long-term question of our purpose in life. What is the one great thing that gives meaning to getting out of bed in the morning? What is the one thing that puts a smile on our face when we slide between the sheets that night?
If we are lucky, we might have more than one thing that gives a sense of purpose. For example, you add a pet animal into your household. Now you have a new purpose in life: the well-being of that animal. Or you fall in love and enter into a long-term relationship. Now, the overriding purpose in life is mutual happiness. Or it could be something else. Your purpose directs your goals.
O. Henry’s short story, The Gift of the Magi perfectly explains it. A young, impoverished married couple wants to give each other a meaningful gift for Christmas as a tangible expression of their love. Each of them sacrifices something very important to make a great good possible. All of their thoughts and action becomes purpose put into action.
The first challenge might be to understand and articulate what we believe is our purpose in life; the second is to figure out what to do when circumstances radically change. Among the more common changes might be when a spouse dies, when the children leave home and the parent(s) become empty-nesters, or retirement. In all of these situations we find a large part of our identity in our relationship with other people who are supreme importance to us. When that relationship changes we have to find a new purpose.
Finding that purpose is perhaps one of the most important things we can do, and it is not easy if we have been forced to deal with new circumstances in life. From the start, we are cut loose from an older pattern of life, and some of our responsibilities disappear. Old goals become all but meaningless, and yet we are stuck with each new set of twenty-four hours.
Until we find a new purpose it is far too easy to lapse into a meaningless routine of filling up the hours. The world provides us with no end of time-wasting opportunities – television, the internet, too much food and drink, and more. We develop what psychologists describe as Brain Rot where we lose our motivation to do anything. We stay isolated from others, we yield to all of the click bait on the computer or television and quit thinking and doing. It is no way to live, and we know it.
Or perhaps we yield to the temptation of thinking of any sort of action has having a purpose. My father had a number of retired friends who would get together every morning for coffee, and the initial conversation was always, “So, what’s new?” They would have their coffee, talk, and go on their way. Then, later in the afternoon the same fellows would meet at the same diner for coffee and ask what was new since the last saw each other a few hours earlier. Yes, they were in motion, but that was it.
It might take time, and there might be a few false starts, but we have to keep working at finding that one great thing that gives purpose to our life. Fortunately, there are plenty of good examples of how to change.
Dale Carnegie wrote of the day President Theodore Roosevelt visited the construction site of the National Cathedral. He spotted three workmen and asked what they were doing. The first said he was stacking stones for the masons to use; the second said he was moving a stack of stones from one place to another. The third paused, stood up straight, smiled broadly and said, “I am helping to build the greatest cathedral in the world.” You and I know it is the third man, doing the same work as the other two, who found his purpose in life.
A man I truly admired, Ed Gardener of Clover Lick, West Virginia, had spent his entire professional career working at the Green Bank Observatory. Then he retired. Instead of joining ‘the boys’ as he called his fellow retirees, for coffee every morning, he bought a banjo and taught himself how to play Clawhammer or frailing style banjo. He dedicated himself to it, practicing several hours each day. Soon after, he took lessons from Dwight Dillard at Hillsboro, learning from one of the finest clawhammer musicians in the country. Once Ed learned it, he and his banjo started going to nursing homes to entertain others, and he started teaching the style to youngsters.
When asked why he did it, he explained that he wasn’t interested in winning competitions or making a record of his music. He wanted to put smiles on the hearts of others, entertain people a bit, and maybe help them forget their troubles so their life would be better.
There is a pattern here. We cannot afford to wait until a purpose drops into our lap. We have to go in search of it, grasp it, and take action.
