PURPOSE
Purpose always seemed like ever changing concept to me as I have wanted to be different things and people during the course of my life, new goals and dreams tag along on my way to whichever dream I have decided to make my ultimate and so the question “what do you want to be when you grow up?” always left me speechless. Growing up, I assumed that a purpose would come to me as it seemed to come to everyone else and so I shrugged off the question and defined myself by my goals of the moment, getting that grade, getting that internship or learning that skill. All this came to a head when I entered my final year of university.
I suppose I felt what most of my peers did, a sense of time running away from us. All of a sudden, the question that I had pushed off all my life had come to collect, “when you grow up” was finally here and no one was asking in amusement or indulgence anymore. Money and time had been invested in the “goal of the moment” that I had set and run towards for five years and I still did not have the answer. As someone who had always placed my self-identity and worth in the goal I was actively running towards, this felt like a failure. This was one of my first experiences with existential fear and uncertainty and I was ill equipped to deal with it, this contributed to a panic attack.
I tried my best to pull myself out of my head, I still had a year of school to go so I told myself that I still had time. During the year, I read everything and listened to everyone that I thought could help and they all kept saying the same thing but in different words, Michelle Obama put it best in her memoir, “becoming”, she helped me understand that growing up is infinite and that my goals shape and reshape themselves around my purpose which had always been right in front of me.
I did not reach this conclusion in one stunning moment of clarity, finding my purpose took me on a journey for over a year and I learned a lot from the most unexpected people; people my age who were living through the same turmoil, people from different parts of the world speaking different languages helped me understand that my way of living, attaching who I am and my sense of value to grades and goals was making me unhappy and that my purpose would not be found in a place of pain. Pulling myself out of my pain was painful in itself, the path to understanding that I can be happy even in stillness, that every heave of my tired lungs as I tried to catch my breath did not have to leave me feeling worthless.
As a very logical and goal-oriented person, staying still and trying to find myself within myself and not outside parameters was not easy. I have always prided myself on what I could provide, what needs I could meet and lived with the fear that if I was not useful to anybody, I would be irrelevant. Shaking these ideologies off was a battle with myself as a person and a war between my happiness and my elusive purpose because I did not yet understand that they could be one and the same. But I shook it off and stopped trying to run towards the shadow of my future and started asking the me of the present what she was becoming.
Listening to people that had the same look in their eyes as I did before I stopped to breathe was a difficult but liberating experience; people who had learned how to stop and rest during their races, to look at their maps again, correct, re-draw, tear and start over, telling me that I could be happy while running or pausing to tie my laces, that I did not have to wait to get to the next post to be happy. My joy was not lying across the next finish line that I had written in my New Year’s resolution checklist and neither was my purpose.
Lectures on purpose with religious references do little to help a student that does not understand that the thing they look outward for has always existed within themselves, in every unplanned thought and seemingly whimsical action. Finding my purpose meant meeting all of myself, the parts of me that I did not know existed because I suppressed them so much, they forgot how to even whisper, telling them that they did not fit into the grand plans they themselves made. I met the girl who is willing to fail and try again, the reflection that is less ashamed to stare back, one who severs relationships that threaten her peace even as she bleeds from her eyes into her sheets. Even today, I welcome new versions of myself without the wariness I had when I first met apathy.
My purpose often seeps out of my mind as the aches from sitting hunched over my laptop for hours seep in, but my reflection always stares back at me unflinchingly. I stare at her and take in her tired eyes that are filled with conviction, she could always be happier but she does not shrink back anymore, those eyes no longer hold the frantic feeling of displacement, all of us are finally starting to feel at home within me.
