Without a purpose in life I feel like I’m floating in the open ocean with no destination.
I have a wonderful career, plenty of interests, lovely friends, and a partner I can only thank my lucky stars for, but I often feel incomplete – as if something that I require to be whole is missing.Don’t get me wrong, I still practice gratitude and mindfulness (to the best of my ability anyway), going so far as occasionally engaging in meditation, but whatever that missing part is, it has eluded me thus far. It’s hard to explain to others that I am often unhappy, especially because of the life that I appear to be living.And I think it has a lot to do with lacking a long-term vision for my life.
These are incredibly difficult questions because the fact is, I simply don’t know. The problem with therapy for people like me is thatit’s not the therapist’s job to do an emotion and personality audit, so as to come back with a life plan for me. But that’s what I want.Therapists, for the most part, are not in the business of giving advice; rather, they’re in the business of providing us with life tools. While these generally tend to be pretty great, it’s still not enough for me to understand what I want to get out of my own existence.
Going to my friends or parents for advice doesn’t really work either. What do they know, right? The fact is, no one knows me better than me, and if I don’t know what would make me feel complete, more likely than not, neither do they. This is particularly distressing, sinceI’ve hit a wall a few years back and have no idea how to take it down. So, I recently did what most people in my situation seem to do – I consulted the great and powerful Google. I know. I do that a lot.
“Dear Hume,
You ask advice: ah, what a very human and very dangerous thing to do! For to give advice to a man who asks what to do with his life implies something very close to egomania. To presume to point a man to the right and ultimate goal — to point with a trembling finger in the RIGHT direction is something only a fool would take upon himself.
I am not a fool, but I respect your sincerity in asking my advice. I ask you though, in listening to what I say, to remember that all advice can only be a product of the man who gives it. What is truth to one may be disaster to another. I do not see life through your eyes, nor you through mine. If I were to attempt to give you specific advice, it would be too much like the blind leading the blind…
So if you now number yourself among the disenchanted, then you have no choice but to accept things as they are, or to seriously seek something else. But beware of looking for goals: look for a way of life. Decide how you want to live and then see what you can do to make a living WITHIN that way of life. But you say, “I don’t know where to look; I don’t know what to look for.”
The purpose in life, it seems, is to figure out what that subjectively means to me and then aligning my life with it accordingly, and the first step to doing so, is deciding where to look; isn’t that right, my dearest therapist?
Dear Therapist is an ongoing series of articles. Check out the other posts here!
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