In order to define my life purpose, I must first decide what a life purpose means to me, for I’m sure everyone has their own idea about what their life purpose is. When I first thought about my life purpose, the first thing that came to mind were my goals, hopes and dreams for my life. The sorts of things I have created to give my life a meaningful direction and purpose, the blue print for who I want to be. However I hesitate to call them my life purpose, because it seems that my life’s purpose should be something a little deeper, and more profound than just career and life style choices. I believe that regardless of the choices I make or don’t make, my life will still have or serve a purpose. To believe otherwise would be to deem my life meaningless.
The purpose of life is one of those timeless psychological questions that everyone is sure to contemplate sometime in their life. I’ve often found my mind wondering off to ponder the mysteriously elusive questions created by the human psyche during periods of prolonged quiet and peace. How many people will find the answer to the question of their life purpose and those who do is their answer really the correct one? What of those who never find an answer? Does their failure to find an answer take away from what their purpose was or add to it? I could continue, but the point I am trying to make is that everyone’s life purpose is specific to them and I believe it can only be defined or discovered by them personally. With this individualistic thought floating about in my mind I’m going to try to define the purpose of my life or at least as much of it as I can see now.
Animals and nature mean everything to me and I can’t imagine living in a place without either of them. For as long as I can remember I have had pets and been near the wilderness. I’ve always been able to slip away into the woods when I needed to and it has always been there that I feel the most content and at peace with myself. This probably has a lot to do with why I’ve always wanted to center my life around animals and nature. It is one of my goals to go to UC Davis and become a veterinarian. To be able to help a suffering animal and prevent them from suffering is to me one of life’s most gratifying types of work. My feelings about animals far outweigh any feelings I have yet to experience with people, or any other subject. As controversial as this may be I don’t believe it is wrong, in fact to me it is a sign that I am right to concentrate my energy with them. Another goal I have is for me to be able to run my own wildlife rehabilitation sanctuary someday. There is something about wild animals that calls to me, they have an aura of freedom, grace and timelessness about them that makes me feel immense joy and wrenching sorrow. To be able to see a hawk in the sky or a bear in the woods is a gift that I want to make sure I can share with the future. So I feel very strongly that I need to work to save what little wilderness we still have left.
If I could accomplish even one of these goals, I believe my life will have served a profound purpose. Whether or not this is my life’s purpose, I don’t know. All too often I find myself caught up in plans and dreams of the future while I miss the opportunities and joy in the present. It is the present; after all, that we will spend our entire lives living in and so it must be in the present that I find the purpose for my life. It is through my present that I will shape the mold for my future and give meaning to my past. In this moment I will create my purpose fueled by all the intensity and passion that is me. At this place in time, my purpose may be as simple or complex as seeing the wonder in a spider’s web, a tree’s bark or the smile of a stranger.
Currently, as I write I’m rumbling along in a city bus that smells faintly of stale people and exhaust to attend a finance class in Medford. From this, I could say that the purpose is to learn financing so I can become financially independent or I can look around and see the purpose in this second. This snippet of time shared with people I have never met and will likely never know who in some way are each playing out their own life purpose. We are all brought together for a moment during our separate journeys to share something perhaps a smile and nod with the gothic retro hippie sitting in front of me or a few words with the grizzled old man in frayed pants who smells faintly of tobacco. How, you might ask, is this purposeful? Well, if through your small talk and understanding smile you can touch another and brighten their day however minutely, have you not served a purpose? Perhaps the question shouldn’t be what is our personal life purpose, but rather what purpose can we give to another’s life.
In conclusion, I will say that the purpose of my life right now is to discover myself, share in the discovery of all other life around me and to find purpose in every minute of every day. It is also a thought I had that your life purpose is centered around that which you are most passionate about, for great things only happen when there is great passion pushing them along. Some would say that passion and love are the greatest power that mankind has so wouldn’t make sense that your life’s purpose is really your greatest passion, life’s passion.