I found my life’s purpose. Now what?
By: Keith York
Tags: Purpose, Imposter Syndrome, Self Reliance, Uncertainty, Choice

Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash

There are certain moments in my life that I’ll never forget. I suspect we all have those.

I was a pretty sick kid. I remember being somewhere around 7 years old and seeing, through the clear plastic walls of an oxygen tent, the nurse coming into my hospital room holding a silver tray with my next penicillin shot on it. The routine was well established. Every four hours, the on-duty nurse would arrive, carrying that damned tray, rip the band-aid off alternating thighs, give me a shot in the same place I got one 8 hours earlier, and then reapply a fresh band-aid. I’ll never forget the burning pain of those shots, the weight of my parents holding me down as soon as I saw the nurse coming, or the image of the syringe and tray flying through the air after I kicked it out of her hands once, not out of anger but of fear.

I’ll also never forget the night, as a teenager, miserable with the aching chills that accompany a fever of 103 or 104, that I forced myself into a bathtub filled with ice-water because Mom said that was the best way to get the fever to break. She and Dad were out for the night and had called from a pay phone to see if I was OK. I was at home, alone. I have no idea if Mom was right to this day. I just remember it sucked.

I like to think those moments made me who I am today. I need an excuse.

Of course, I have good memories too. I think there are numerous reasons why certain things are stored in the more accessible part of our brains, but, for me, there’s one memory in particular that lingers, not only because of the impact it had on me at the time, but also because I’ve consciously kept it close, like a key in my pocket, hoping someday to find the door it’s supposed to unlock. (I was considering a ‘lottery ticket’ metaphor here. Let me know, as the story goes on, if you think it would have been better).

Back in the early 90’s I got involved with a ‘New-Age, Human Potential’ organization. Say what you will but I credit the time I spent with them, and some of the sessions I attended, with changing my life. I met my wife there, for one, but I also learned that I had the power to look deeper into the perceptions and beliefs that informed my decisions, and consciously choose which ones to keep and which ones to change. I learned that we can’t control what happens, but we can control how we choose to respond to what happens.

In one of the sessions, we did an exercise where 3 of us sat in a triad, facing each other, hands held, as the facilitator led us through an exercise about finding our “Purpose in Life”. I don’t remember what the facilitator said, or what my triad partners experienced. What I do remember, and will never forget, is that, at some point in that exercise, the 3 of us started spinning like a propeller, and then we left the ground. As we spiraled upwards the words “I want to spread the word”, “I want to spread the word”, “I want to spread the word!” spilled out of me — unrestrained by the mechanism in me that filters for clarity, meaning and appropriateness. I just kept saying those 6 words. And then we landed, we stopped spinning, the lights came on and I stared at my partners in disbelief. Of course, we hadn’t ‘actually’ been spinning, nor did we ‘actually’ leave the ground, but something impactful had happened. I had tapped into my purpose. To this day I know that to be true, but there’s one problem. I don’t know what it means.

I love to pontificate, out loud frequently, about all of the safe topics like religion, politics and the relationship between the two. I’m reasonably sure, however, that I was not meant to be a minister or a politician. I regularly write and share my thoughts on ideas ranging from the uncertainty, fear and pain of parenting to how to help entrepreneurs write a business plan. Most of the stuff I write seems symptomatic of something bigger to me, though, and there are certainly experts who are more qualified to write about kids and business. So, I haven’t discovered, yet, I don’t think, what ‘word’ it is I’m supposed to be spreading. I have the ‘key’ to my purpose, but I haven’t found the right door.

So, here I am, writing about what, in the end, I write about the most. Uncertainty. (Speaking of uncertainty, I have zero confidence that I punctuated that last sentence correctly — yet I carry on.) And maybe there’s a message there for someone. I think we look for answers too much. We go on dates hoping to find ‘the one’ we were meant to marry. We go to school, work various jobs, and sometimes travel the world waiting to discover our ‘calling’, jealous of those that apparently have found theirs. We doubt ourselves, certain that everybody else knows what they’re doing, when in reality, perhaps the only place real certainty exists is in our imagination.

Life is really, really complicated folks. And, sometimes, rather than waiting till we’re certain that we’ve found our political leaning, our soul-mate, our life’s calling, or the one philosophy or religion that will guide our life, maybe we’re meant to just embrace the uncertainty. And, dance.

I suppose that’s it. My purpose in life is to spread the word that we all face uncertainty every day, and give each of you, each of us, permission to be a little afraid, to 2nd guess ourselves, and to embrace the butterflies that come with doing something we’re not quite sure is going to work. Be a little scared, and do it anyways because, in fact, that’s what everybody else is doing too.

I’m relieved to have worked that out. I’ve found my purpose in life.

Maybe.

Or not.

Damn.