I am going to put this one in the "good ideas, bad conclusions" category. I was just reading this article:

http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/01/how-to-discover-your-life-purpose-in-about-20-minutes/

The website's subtitle "Personal Development for Smart People" served its intended person, baiting me to read further. The specific article challenges you to sit down quietly and uninterrupted and start writing answers to the question "What is my Life Purpose?" until you get to one that makes you cry. This is your life purpose.

This doesn't seem a completely unreasonable task. I like to think I am mindful and self aware person but I am willing to admit that focusing on a very specific question completely uninterrupted would likely lead to some new insights. So I am considering putting some time aside to give this a try, and then the author offers his "life purpose":

"to live consciously and courageously, to resonate with love and compassion, to awaken the great spirits within others, and to leave this world in peace."

I don't know what that is but it sure ain't a life purpose. It is vague to the point of uselessness. These vague dictates must mean something more concrete to the author, but if you are not going to offer or explore those more concrete goals then what is the point. The fact that one person's answer isn't inspiring to me shouldn't devalue the exercise but it sure makes me question whether there is any value to this guy's advice.

Hmph.

I don't think that there IS ANY purpose, so the idea seems arbitrary to me. That said, if I wanted to make up an arbitrary purpose for my life, I don't know that I could necessarily come up with a better one than his. I kinda like it. It's not as concrete as "He who dies with the most toys wins," but then I don't know that "meaning" is terribly concrete either.

- NonE

(Besides, scheduling all those oil changes on the Ferrari collection would get really old after a while, I think.)

"Is this task that I am doing leading in some concrete fashion toward the awakening of the great spirit in others?" might be a way of constant reevaluation which would provide the compass corrections which might otherwise be missed in the storm.

I don't know. I didn't listen to the talk or exercise and am only saying that, for me, what he said seems really on point. I found it interesting that the thing that made him cry was the thing which he believes is his purpose. That's an interesting measuring device. Maybe, in regards to another thread, it is a direct tap into the right brain's view of life and such.

But it doesn't speak to you. That is fine. That reminds me of the saying, "when the student is ready, the teacher will appear."

I saw a promotional paid piece on the wall screen yesterday which spoke to me. It was a show about a doctor and his wife (who may have been a doctor as well) who retired and then happened to travel to some god-forsaken country where they saw a child with a cleft pallette. They donated their services to provide free surgery to that child, and then to others. And now they have an organization set up which has volunteers who do this surgery on hundreds of children a year, for free. I was incredibly moved by their work, and it was apparent that they received much greater satisfaction from this than they had from anything else that had happened before in their lives.

In thinking about this, I don't see how they could have come at this idea with a plan. Rather it seems to be the kind of thing that would appear to one when one was seeking to make the world better for others. They chose to give this kid surgery instead of having another latte and getting back on the tour bus.

Sorry if this seems out of context or rambly or whatever, it's just some thoughts sparked by your post.

- NonE

I know that story NonE, and it is one of my favorites....even the smallest thing that we can do to make a difference in someone's life can be important to that person, yes?

I think the confusion that Static has, and that I often have, and probably ALL of us have, is to see things in the aggregate and not to recognize that "aggregate" is simply to pull together a lot of separate items.

It's the same reasoning that makes it okay to bomb some country off the face of the earth because ONE PERSON who happened to be in or from that country may have done something bad to someone else.

Would it make sense to carpet bomb the town next to you because there was one sicko living there who molested your daughter?

This seems to be a problem inherent in the way in which the human mind processes stuff, and I don't have an answer for it but to be aware of this propensity and to consciously guard against it whenever possible.

- NonE

The quoted comment was phrased insensitively and that surely is a sign that I suffer from the types of thinking that NonE describes. I also, even more dramatically, suffer from a bias towards system building: If an effort is not easily scalable, does not benefit from operational leverage, then I tend to think it is not worth investing in.

In this case though I was also being intentionally vague so as not to spoil the video which explains that cleft pallets cause much more damage than just visual deformity.

I've seen studies which seem to reveal that we humans judge the value (mating value perhaps?) of others based (partially) on the symmetrically of the face. And so it would logically follow that someone with a severely contorted facial structure would be subconsciously repugnant to us. And so, totally aside from any physiological detriment, it appears that a cleft palette will virtually guarantee a childhood devoid of beneficial social interaction, regardless of what other benefits such child might bring to the party.

So the repair of such a situation is pretty much life saving in the reality of human culture. I would then surmise that it is not unlike diving into a river to save a drowning child. How can you measure such stuff? You can't. That doesn't mean it is without value.

- NonE (rambling on and on)

Again, I don't mean to minimize the visual and resulting social effects, but there is even more to it than that.

So FINE I will spoil the video:

The speaker in the video discusses how cleft pallets impair the function of the inner ear. As a result, the brains of children that have these conditions develop while "listening" to garbled auditory signals. This causes the brains auditory processors to attune themselves to these garbled signals rather than correct signals. In terms of auditory development, growing up with a cleft pallet is like having headphones feeding your brain white noise constantly. This causes many children who aren't treated early enough to develop serious language deficiencies because their brains simply haven't developed the ability to parse normal language sounds.

WOW. That sounds horrible. I didn't know that. Thanks.

- NonE

Life doesn't have a purpose, and people have a miscellany of purposes.

A long time ago, a bout two years ago I think, I came across this and tried it. I spent several sessions and probably a total of at least 2.5 hours and couldn't find something to make me cry. It was a useful exercise in understanding myself though. However, I don't think there's a single purpose to anyone's life these days.