The Pervasiveness of Purposelessness | PASSAGES :008
“Find out who you are and do it on purpose.” —Dolly Parton
I’m having a hard time with purpose. Not my purpose. And not the purpose of others, either.
My problem with purpose is that I’ve been thinking about the various reasons why purposelessness is pervasive right now. I don’t have a scientific study to prove an increase in purposelessness, though I’m certain I could do an internet search and find one. But the work of philosopher and cognitive scientist John Vervaeke does point to this phenomenon in his expansive YouTube series, Awakening from the Meaning Crisis, in which he highlights the three components of “meaning” in modern cognitive science, according to the work of social psychologist Samantha Heintzelman: coherence, significance, and—you guessed it—purpose.
The point is this: so many people are adrift right now. Why?
“It is better to strive in one’s own dharma than to succeed in the dharma of another. Nothing is ever lost in following one’s own dharma, but competition in another’s dharma breeds fear and insecurity.” —Bhagavad Gita
Trappist monk and priest Thomas Merton used the word vocation—which comes from the Latin word vocare, meaning “to call”—but is talking about purpose and dharma when he said (please excuse his dude language here), “Every man has a vocation to be someone: but he must understand clearly that in order to fulfill this vocation he can only be one person: himself.”
To fulfill your purpose, you must be yourself. If you want to know why you are here then you better figure out who you are.
Similarly, The Queen of Country, Dolly Parton said, “Find out who you are and do it on purpose.”
Dolly and the monk are both echoing what spiritual teachers throughout history have taught and what is captured by the ancient Sanskrit word dharma. That purpose is closely related to identity. Purpose flows out of identity.
If this is the case—and I believe it is (Dolly ain’t lyin’!)—then it would make sense that at the root of the problem of purposelessness is confusion about who we really are. With this in mind, I want to suggest three primary misconceptions about identity that interfere with following our own dharma and are behind this growing sense of purposelessness.
Misconception #1. You are what you do.
You know the drill: you meet someone at a party or on the sidelines of your kid’s soccer game and the first question is, “What do you do?” You answer, and then echo the question. Or, if you already know the person, you ask “How are you?” The default response is, preferably, “Busy”—which may have something to do with all the soccer games but is especially related to your very very important job.
Yes, these questions are ways of connecting. They’re fairly innocent. But these common social interactions also betray the distinctly American obsession with the work we do. Our work is so important that it defines us, this story says. Throughout our lives the ways we receive love and patterns of relating and other forms of social conditioning reinforce this story: I am what I do.
If you think your job defines you, then you come to believe that it is the only arena in which you express your purpose. This can make you incapable of feeling a sense of purpose in other areas of your life, through relationships with family and friends, service in the community, and activities and hobbies. It also places too much pressure on your job (which Simone Stolzoff explores in The Good Enough Job), and becomes especially problematic when your job isn’t challenging or fulfilling—when your job sucks. Even worse, if you let your LinkedIn credentials define your identity, then when your job sucks, you suck! Not just a part of your life, but who you are entirely. This is crushing.
Misconception #2. You are what you achieve/acquire.
This misconception is related to the first, but is more obsessed with outcomes. It says that fulfillment comes in the future after certain things are achieved, when something else arrives. It’s never here and now.
When you are fixated on arriving there—to a desired number in your bank account/s or behind the wheel of that particular car or on the beach in that exotic place or reaching that many followers or achieving any other status symbol or level of notoriety—then you’re more likely to do whatever it takes now. Hustle nonstop at the expense of your health. Be so tethered to your phone and email that you’re checked-out in your relationships. Work your ass off until you retire, and miss living your life now.
But here’s the other thing that happens: when you accomplish and acquire what you set out to, the sense of fulfillment you experience is fleeting (which, by the way, is really not fulfillment at all!). It doesn’t feel like you thought it would. You’re still not happy. Maybe you even feel like a failure. And this needs to be fixed, as soon as possible. So you set your sights on some new ends to achieve and you arrange your life accordingly. This disappointed response, by the way, is what happens IF you achieve or acquire what you set out to. There is another possibility: you don’t achieve your desired outcome, which leads to endless frustration.
Ultimately, this future-focused relationship with what we do distorts our sense of purpose. When our why for doing something is always down the road, and when arriving there never lives up to the hype, our capacity to recognize the meaningful contributions we are making here and now is diminished. Our ability to delight in daily actions and tasks disappears. Work in all of its forms becomes rote and lifeless, devoid of any sense of purpose. We might still be extremely productive—but just because something is productive doesn’t make it purposeful.
Misconception #3. You are who they say you are.
Finally, purposelessness is pervasive because too often we allow someone or something outside of us to define our identity. We outsource our agency. In terms of our purpose, we relinquish our power to something external instead of acting from our internal knowing.
We can see this misconception at play quite clearly when we look at the realms of business and marketing and the reductionist definitions of our identity that they propagate: consumer, viewer, user, subscriber, and others. (Speaking of subscribing, click the button below and become a STILL subscriber if you haven’t already!).
But we also see this you are who they say you are misconception distorting our sense of identity in the two prevalent current dynamics of distraction and fear.
Distraction is one major impairment to your capacity to hear what theologian, mystic, and civil rights leader Howard Thurman called the sound of the genuine within you—your calling, your unique contribution to the world that flows from your true identity. Spending over one hundred days a year on screens on average not only drowns out the sound of the genuine, it distorts our relationship with purpose in a few other ways. First, it bombards us with messages that mess with our identity. Second, it presents a tempting alternative to the challenge of pursuing one’s purpose: a passive and risk-less existence of living vicariously through a real or imagined character. Third, it also contributes to pain and confusion and loss: Everyone else seems to be living their best lives, but maybe I just missed something. Perhaps there really is nothing I’m here to do.
In addition to distraction, fear derails having an identity-inspired sense of purpose. Climate crisis and global conflict and inflation and political polarization and the rise of AI are all very real. And they all present very serious challenges. But when we surrender in fear to these external factors and live reactively, we aren’t able to access our inner wisdom to respond creatively and collaboratively. When fear defines us, we live disempowered lives—allowing some outer situation to define what is possible or not in our lives.
Additionally, it’s important to remember that while these external realities may affect jobs and work (this struggle is real!), they don’t mess with purpose. If anything, these serious matters disrupt the shallow “purposes” we’ve settled for when we allow our jobs and achievements to define us. Rather than squelching our sense of purpose, they invite us to clarify our purpose. To bring our why to bear on the challenges humanity is facing and the suffering people are undergoing.
So there they are…
You are what you do.
You are what you achieve/acquire.
You are who they say you are.
…three fundamental misconceptions about identity that lead to purposelessness.
These thoughts are still very much in process so I’d love to know what you think.
Which one of these misconceptions are you struggling with?
What resonates? Where am I off? What am I missing?