It’s beautifully terrifying how little life gives us to work with. You might first look to the wide streets of history to try and find a starting place, or the temperament of the blood that runs in your veins, the same that gave your mother the strength to bear you. The past is comfortable. Every great success and failure is documented for you to peruse; the shortcomings of others form a clear pathway to avoid. Unfortunately, time keeps moving forward.
The context you grasp from the past slips away until you’re left with the bare morals. Don’t do this, do that, make sure you treat everyone like this, always look for that. The ethics gained from history or religion serve as the rough outline for life. You’ve still got to fill in the blanks.
Sure it’s easy to just do whatever your parents did, and their parents before them. The sweat on your brow and the smile on their faces might be all the confirmation you need to live happily. It’s unlikely you have a framework like this to work from though. You might look to your ancestors and see misery, the bruises of abuse and lashes of discontent littering their bodies. Nothing could be more wasteful than falling into the pitfalls discovered by your kin.
This is where that ubiquitous word bursts through the doors and demands your attention; what will your PURPOSE be? What makes you worthy of consuming the bountiful fruits of society? How will you repay the debt of existence to a world of uncaring aimless people? How did you become so important to yourself?
We all grasp for some meaning to the madness. We can’t just be talking animals who roam the prairies of Walmart in search of sustenance, Right? Surely there must be a higher power, a reason to live, a PURPOSE. If we stop the manhunt for meaning we’ll be lost in the endless void, floating aimlessly as our peers gaze unapprovingly on our squandered gift.
Maybe it doesn’t matter what they think. Maybe we don’t need to do everything perfectly or have a big shiny PURPOSE to propel us through the murky waters of uncertainty. Maybe we need to learn to embrace the beauty in a day with nothing gained instead of crushing ourselves with unowned guilt.
You can never plan for your life and the events that transpire. Your truest self will be molded by every little event and how you choose to react. All those reactions will be controlled by factors ranging from how terrible your breakfast was, to what your mothers last words were. The real things that form your life can’t be planned for.
If you’re trying to figure out where to start, stop. Just begin.