Not Everything Has to Have a Purpose
By: Ryan Fan
Tags: Work, Philosophy, Life, Self, Television

“Why does everything have to have a purpose? The world is a jungle, and if you want my advice, Anthony, don’t expect happiness. You won’t get it…It’s all a big nothing. What makes you think you’re so special?” — Olivia Soprano.

Well, who would have thought that Olivia Soprano would be a philosopher?

The world is a jungle. Not everything has to have a purpose. Don’t expect happiness.

In 20 seconds, Olivia Soprano, the grandmother of Anthony Soprano Jr., explained absurdist philosophy better than he could have learned himself — and she spoke from the heart of someone who knew that not everything has a purpose, that the world is a jungle, that happiness doesn’t come when you expect it.

At the moment, Anthony Soprano Jr., only in his freshman year of high school, found himself disillusioned with life and quoting philosophers to his parents on the lack of meaning in life. On one occasion, he takes his mother’s car out of the garage, drives it with his friends, and breaks the side mirror.

I believe in God and my faith in Christ means that everything I do is to satisfy God’s plan. But for people who don’t believe in God or are skeptics, life doesn’t have to have a purpose.

I wondered for a very long time when I was younger about what the purpose of life was. I know now, for me, that it’s to love God and love my neighbor, but when I was Anthony Soprano Jr.’s age, at 15, these were questions I thought about every day.

You know that stage in high school where everyone thinks they’re a philosopher? Yeah, well I had one of those stages — but I wish I realized something then, that life doesn’t always have to have a purpose, that some things just are what they are at face value and that you don’t need to read deeper into them.

What’s the purpose of daily living functions at the Maslow hierarchy of needs? Survival. You eat to survive, drink water to survive, and sleep to survive. But if the purpose of life is survival, well, what else are you doing? How are you contributing to the world?

And so life doesn’t always need to have a purpose. That isn’t to say that it never needs to have a purpose, because I found mine at a certain age, but that needing there to be existential meaning in everything you do is just exhausting.

For example, I was always the guy that stood up for my friends when others gossiped about how they weren’t behaving well, weren’t coming to practice enough for cross country, or were just not pleasant to be around. I would get angry at how they were trying to dictate how that person would behave and what they should do, say something like “you have no idea what they’re going through, and who are you to judge anyways,” and leave it like that.

I would like to say that I was acting in accordance with God’s plan and biblical doctrine, which, while I believe to be true, can also be explained by the fact that I just stood up for my friends because I did. There wasn’t a big purpose behind it. I got angry at gossip and just felt like I should do it, so I did it.

I didn’t seek any greater reward for it — in fact, my relationships probably suffered from the fact that I openly disagreed with my friends’ sanctimonious behavior. There may have been personal experiences where I felt misunderstood that were behind my actions, but there was really no big purpose or meaning behind standing up for what I believed to be right. I just did it, and I didn’t expect anything behind it.

The more I navigate the cruel reality that is life, I realize that others operate the same way — doing what they feel and believe to be right without some grandiose purpose behind them. That isn’t to say that I’m not motivated by God’s plan and the Bible, nor that I don’t believe everything is a gift from God, but I won’t have a Bible verse to quote behind every single thing I do.

It’s not like there isn’t a big picture purpose in the grand scheme of things, but that every day acts like holding the door open for someone don’t need to have a big purpose.

There’s something liberating about not needing to always have a purpose. It’s hard to think deeply all the time. One of my old jobs was as a stocker at Wal-Mart. My job was to put cans, papers, and detergents on shelves. I would have driven myself crazy at the time just thinking about what was the big divine plan behind having to put cans of Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup on a shelf. It was just something that needed to be done and that I was getting paid to do, and so I did it.

The world is a jungle, and life doesn’t always have to have a purpose. Your existential angst will be alleviated once you release yourself from that need and constraint.