Saying no to purpose-driven anxiety

Redefining purpose as an inner force not an outer action.

This week I went to see Elizabeth Gilbert speak at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester. I dithered over the ticket price for a while, aware she would speak only for an hour, with a few questions thereafter, wondering if she had anything to say that was not already in the very public domain in which she lives her life. In the end, I decided curiosity alone was always worth the flashing of a credit card. I declined the expensive ‘groupie’ seats that included a brief backstage encounter with Elizabeth and bought a comfortable aisle seat in the circle from where I could watch the crowd as much as I could watch her. She came on stage, took her applause, and made everyone laugh by striking poses for photographs. Then she asked for people to put their phones away and settle into just being together for the time we had. A hush fell over the hall. She began to speak and my hand flew to my heart as her first sentence struck me with its immediate relevance.

“I want to talk about purpose-driven anxiety.”

‘Oh yes. I want to hear about that,’ I thought. This is something I grapple with, if not daily, at least several times a week. She deftly, humorously, and accurately defined and dissected the concept.

There is a strong message in society: we all must find our purpose in life, the one thing about which we are passionate and which is our unique gift or talent, our raison d’être. Ideally, we will find it in our teens and live our whole life according to it, but certainly, we must find it at some point in our lives, for to die without having lived it makes us failures. No matter that there are billions of people in the world at the moment we all must find something unique to do. Oh, and it is not enough to just do it. We must monetize it. We must also all change the world with it no matter how chaotic that would be if we all did so. Then we must leave a legacy with it. We must leave a mark on the world - no matter that the world is quite vocally asking us to please stop putting marks on her.

Her thesis was that it is ridiculous, and impossible that we should all have one unique thing to do in life, that we should be able to find it, and that it should be hidden from us in the first place. And how could you ever prove that you had found your one thing? Instead, she suggested, the positive opposite of purpose was not purposelessness. It was presence. We are not here to do one thing we are passionate about, for money, to create change. We are called instead to be present at the moments in our lives, to bear witness to the wonders of the world. We are invited to create just for the sake of it not for money or fame or legacy.

It was a deeply seductive message, bringing it as it did a sense of release and peace, the promise of rest, a permission to stop searching. It was just as seductive as the concept of ‘one true purpose’ had also been, with its offering of certainty, clarity and worthiness. Until, perhaps, you realized that the person offering this antidote to dedicating your life to monetizing your one true passion was a woman whose writing has netted her millions, standing on a stage talking to people who had paid a significant sum each to hear her talk about her writing, which she has openly and repeatedly said was the only thing she ever wanted to do in life.

This is one of those moments that casts me back to being a Judge faced with two very strong arguments, advocated for by eloquent lawyers. Both have significant merit, both have holes shot right through them. Which is more right? On which side should I place my weight? Sometimes the answer to that dilemma was to ask a different question: why are you asking me to make this judgment in the first place? What do you really need?

Photo by Alexander Schimmeck on Unsplash

The reason this topic was of such interest to me is that I find myself bedeviled by choice. In my case, leaving a career that was a singular structure in my life left options wide open. Even if you are creating around the demands of a day job, caring obligations, or the limitations of poor health, the society in which we live offers us an incomprehensible array of choices. They spread out fractally like a never-ending flow chart. The idea of finding ‘one thing’ is attractive because underneath the idea of finding our why or passion our purpose is the fundamental longing to be relieved from the relentless burden of choice.

Of course, the easiest way to be relieved from the burden of choice might be to just randomly pick one life purpose and stick to it. Most of us struggle to do that for several reasons. First, it is not compatible with the endless curiosity which is the hallmark of creativity. Secondly, there is no quantitative criteria on which to make that choice and therefore there will always be underlying anxiety that we have not made the right choice. Thirdly, choices breed choices. They split like fractals always offering yet another forked path. Taking ever narrower paths suddenly leads you to another wide-open vista: Rabbi or writer? Writer. Fiction or non-fiction? Non-fiction. Book or essays? Essays. About what? Life…. Fourthly, we are multiple parts, all of which need expression at some point and demand different, even contradictory choices. Fifthly, we thrive on difference. Do we really want to do one thing for the whole of our lives?

Perhaps what we are searching for is not the ending of choice itself but a way to make that constant process of choosing less burdensome. A way to be content with the creative choices we make. We are looking for simplicity, reassurance, for permission to trust in our decisions. As a Judge, I usually had statutory checklists and case law precedents to guide me. In the creative world, there are no rules, only well-intentioned authors standing on stages giving seemingly conflicting messages. What I am asking myself is: how do I know, that my choice today to sit in my writing shed and to write about this particular topic was the best thing I could have done with my life today? That it wasn’t - gulp- a waste of time?

I don’t. Nor do you. Nor does Elizabeth Gilbert. (And to be fair she didn’t pretend to). We don’t even truly know that there is a best thing. And what does it even mean to waste time - as if eternity is a bounded resource? So then the question becomes how do I get rid of the habit of constantly second-guessing my never-ending choices? What habit can I put in its place instead?

I have no idea what would work for you and figuring it out for myself is a work in progress, but in case you are interested let me share where I am up to with it right now. This morning I did that odd thing that you regular readers are now familiar with. I used my trusty online resource to translate the word ‘purpose’ into Hebrew and then looked at its shoresh, its three-letter root. That root is shared with words related to completion: to be finished, extinction, annihilation, to wane, to be exhausted. There is perhaps something to ponder there about whether purpose is something we know and actively follow in life or whether it is better thought of as the sum of a life, only knowable when we are done with it. Those, however, were not the words that most caught my attention.

The word for purpose - tachlit - shares its root with the word for kidney - kilya. The function of a kidney is to remove waste, toxins and excess from the body and to regulate essential functions. Whilst many body parts can be removed, we cannot live without a kidney or artificial dialysis. So often we speak of purpose as an aim or objective, a result we set out to achieve, a series of actions. What if we thought of purpose as a regulatory system? What if we thought purpose was the inner wisdom that helps us reject what is bad for us and helps us hold on to what works to keep us well in mind body and soul? What if finding purpose was less about ascertaining what we had to do out there in the world and more about learning to listen to our internal filter systems? What if it was less about locating our place in society and more about finding the center of gravity deep within us?

I am of course not presenting you with anything new here though maybe I’ve dressed it in novel words. Indeed just yesterday my wonderfully wise friend Christine was listening to me talk about how I was finding essay writing so easy and yet the visual art project I had determined to start so hard. “That’s because the writing is coming from within you,” she said. “The art project is something that you are trying to do from the outside. You started with the the gallery you want to fill not with the work you want to show. Write and wait for the art to come from inside you.” Bingo. She was so right.

Purpose defined this way does not require us to strive to prove ourselves. It does not demand ever more of us. It is not dependent on what we can gain from others or how we can carve notches into society. It is about how we can walk gently with ourselves, how we can self-nourish, and how we can bring life to our living.

The burden of choices is softened by asking about each option: Does it feed me? Does it give me rest? Does it regulate me? Does it cleanse me? Does it make me feel good? Does it make red blood pump through my veins, life force through my being? Does it satisfy and nourish? If the answer is yes, then the purpose is fulfilled. It might also lead to money or fame or it might not. Those are consequential side effects. It doesn’t matter that another option might also achieve the same sense of well-being. Spinach is as nutritious as broccoli. There is no ‘right’ vegetable. Choose the one that takes your fancy. Purpose viewed this way is what makes us feel complete, what exhausts dissatisfaction, what ends uncertainty, and what causes that sense of existential panic and dislocation to wane.

This, I think, is what Elizabeth was talking about when she connected purpose with presence. I am however less sure that they are opposites so much as synonyms. Being aware enough - present enough - to know what is harmful to us and what makes us feel good in any given moment is how we find that choice justifying purpose within us.

Elizabeth illustrated this when she spoke of her habit of taking a walk from her hotel while on tour and going without a destination. At each junction, she asks: which is the most interesting path? Now which is the most interesting path? That question requires an internal individual (but not unique) assessment. What draws me might not draw her. Or it might, which is important because, if our purpose was unique to all the billions of us, we would find ourselves walking very lonely paths all our lives.

She also spoke of making decisions this way. Rather than asking what is the cherished end result, she suggested we can ask simply, what is the next right step? What she didn’t say is how we know what the next right step is. If however, we define purpose as being kidney-like then we have an internal sensor at all times that will simply beep with delight and send a foghorn of indifference or alarm out at different options. We need only listen to our own internal reactions.

Living this way is not about decadence and self-indulgence. Even tedious household tasks and the requirements of day jobs have well-being underneath them, creating as they do clean organized spaces or healthy finances. Even selfless acts of service bring the nourishment of knowing you did the right thing.

If the delight alarm rings for more than one option it doesn’t matter. Embrace randomness. Embrace variety, stacking up a whole range of nourishing experiences in your days. Make a banquet of your life.

The very beauty in living this way lies in the not-knowing. We don’t know why we are on earth. It is a mystery to behold not a problem to solve.