Ann Webster-Wright PhD
‘My mind is like a wild leopard, exciting but scary. I have to learn how to tame it.’ My granddaughter, Mischa, and I are discussing her insatiable curiosity and vivid imagination. She loves the creative adventures her mind conjures up, but is increasingly anxious about the dark corners it also explores, exacerbated by the Covid crisis. With the wisdom of her nine years, and support from loving parents, she feels her intention is achievable. She even sleeps with a tame (stuffed) leopard. Leopard taming is her focus – her current purpose perhaps.
For contrast, I interviewed people in their ninth decade, as part of ‘Life Review’ research, listening to them talk about their lives, loves and lessons. Despite disparate backgrounds and varying health and financial status, some shared a certain spark – an openness to people and continuing curiosity about life. I came to call this attitude, ‘staying alive to life’. It was related to their sense of purpose in later life.
Purpose is a pompous word. By definition, it relates to motivation or intention, providing a reason, and a certain resolve, to act. Purpose is often adorned in spiritual or altruistic garments, with connotations of wide-reaching impact and outcomes of significance. In this era marked by uncertainty and division, crises and chaos, and an absence of widely accepted religious or moral guidelines, existential angst abounds. Having a purpose appeals.
‘Finding your Purpose’ is the much-touted aim of a range of motivational seminars, often based on genuine attempts to help others – as well as make a profit. Organisational ‘mission statements’ are common, aiming to align workers with a shared company ‘vison’. Despite laudable aims, the processes are often flawed; the words ‘purpose, vision and mission’ sullied in the neo-liberal, market-focused climate.
Purpose is not a product that can be found – or sold – in the marketplace. Kira Newman, editor of the magazine communicating research from Berkeley’s ‘Greater Good Science Centre,’ describes an ongoing project, investigating what purpose means for people across the lifespan. She talks of purpose as a ‘journey’ rather than a ‘destination’. It changes throughout a lifetime, from youngsters, through mid-life, to elders. The study’s emerging results re-affirmed a significant body of research describing those with a sense of purpose, or direction, being more likely to lead healthier, connected and satisfied lives – at any age.
Youth are focused on the process of finding out about themselves and how they fit into society. They tend not to articulate purpose until late teens – and only about 20% do so even then. During working life, purpose is more likely to be associated with developing a career direction, in addition to – or instead of – building a family. Once daily career and family tasks diminish following retirement, a feeling of purpose, as well as identity, may also dissipate. Older people who maintain a sense of purpose, especially those concerned with supporting future generations, saw their identity as a story, still being written.
Is purpose a path then? Or is it a place perhaps – where we build our life with a particular shape as we would a house? Drawing on both research and philosophy, purpose can be best described as a practice. Purpose pertains to the way we harness our time and energy, so we can choose to direct both towards particular ends, rather than dissipate them in trivial distractions. The implication is that we choose to live life ‘on purpose’ rather than merely drift along.
As a practice, purpose is not fixed, but evolves. It is constantly created and re-crafted as we stumble through the peaks and valleys, deserts and swamps of life. Some people seem born to a certain purpose, such as the Dalai Lama. For others, suffering illness, addiction, or exclusion, purpose may shrink to the act of getting out of bed, showing up in their own lives – a task sometimes as difficult as changing the world. Is a clear purpose only available to those with time and energy to reflect – who are well off or well fed? It appears not. Examples abound of extraordinary people rising above extreme disadvantage to act towards change.
Essentially, purpose aims to make a difference in the world. The purpose we mainly hear about involves philanthropy and grand visions – is capitalised in neon lights – and may contribute greatly to society. But what about small ‘p’ purpose related to daily actions, such as the way we connect with people or care for our environment? Conscious choices to be kind, generous, or supportive can also change lives. As Rutgar Bregman re-iterates in his book, ‘HumanKind,’ such actions are often seen in crises, as communities collaborate. He maintains humans have evolved through co-operation – are not primarily motivated by self-interest, as many politicians would have us believe.
Such simple intentions have major consequences when articulated by people in power, such as Jacinta Ardern highlighting kindness at the United Nations. Generosity can be amplified by those with organisational skills. Entrepreneur Ronni Kahn created OZ Harvest, deciding to distribute rather than waste surplus food. But grass roots actions also count. Greta Thunberg’s lone protest created a ripple effect, galvanising students to demand global climate action.
Meaning, even shared meaning, involves an internal, singular process, whereas purpose is expressed though actions – and interactions – with others. In acknowledging our interconnection as human beings, we accept our actions affect others. Purpose involves a willingness to reflect on what is meaningful in our world and what sort of person we want to be. The act of reflection loosens our habitual ties to the world and heightens our awareness of the status quo.
Meaning mattered in post-war Europe. In the years following horrendous crimes against humanity, philosophers – and citizens – searched for ways of understanding such devastation. In France, existentialism flourished, drawing on Heidegger’s earlier work. Although co-founders of ‘Les Temps Modernes’ in 1945, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty disagreed in many ways. Sartre stressed that we are ‘condemned’ to freedom. It is only in confronting our freedom to choose that we bestow our lives with meaning.
Yet Merleau-Ponty argued ‘we are condemned to meaning’. Layers of meaning accrue to us by the very act of being human, inextricably embedded in a shared world. Through our embodied experience of growing up, we acquire the norms of our family and culture. We may learn to see a flash car as desirable, a policeman as threatening, or a book as powerful. Our ways of ‘being-in-the-world’ become sedimented into habits.
Merleau-Ponty does not negate our freedom to choose. He situates the possibilities of choice that we see, to the world into which we are thrown; our choices are always based on a ‘certain giveness’. He claims we are free ‘not in spite of’ our situations, but ‘by means of them’. Reflecting on our own particular situation enables us to choose. Choice and action ‘cut us loose from our anchorage’. In standing back, we are able to stand up for what matters.
With respect to purpose, our choices are related to a synergy between our abilities and the needs we are able to see in the world. Howard Thurman, a mentor to Martin Luther King, suggested that instead of asking ‘what the world needs’ in seeking purpose, it’s worth asking ‘what makes you come alive,’ because ‘the world needs people who have come alive’. He encouraged King, in times of crises, to nurture his own inner life as a means of sustaining his energy to act with purpose in the outer world.
The older people I met who radiated a sense of ‘staying alive to life’ were all involved in activities that contributed to supporting others, even in small ways such as offering a listening ear. Thinking beyond self-interest needn’t negate the self; such engagement was also sustaining to their own wellbeing. Having a sense of purpose, energised them. Ageing adds urgency to purpose. Ageing is for good; a one-way process without rehearsal or reversal. Many want their later years to count towards the common good.
Despite extolling the virtues of small ‘p’ purpose, with its focus on daily actions, I’ve always been haunted by the imagery and intent of poet Mary Oliver’s question: ‘What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?’
Thinking of Mischa’s leopard mind as both wild and precious, I’m wondering if all of us who are driven by curiosity have ‘leopard minds’? At the heart of all philosophy is curiosity, a seeking to understand some aspect of life’s ambiguities.
Perhaps, instead of taming her mind – quietening its roars to ‘fit the norm’ – Mischa’s intention could be to understand it.
Does her curiosity mean Mischa is a philosopher at heart? Time will tell.
Published in New Philosopher 2020 Dec pp 113-115
(Runner Up in NP Essay Prise on topic of ‘Purpose’)
Anni Webster-Wright 