It has nagged me all of my life, this question, and for whatever reasons, the answer has continued to evade me.  Yes, perhaps because of my fears, or because of my simple thinking, or because of my predilection to pursue pleasure.  But as one ages, the question does not trail off and simply disappear.  Rather, it remains, and becomes more pronounced and more poignant.

“What is your purpose?”

What is your purpose?  What drives you?  What are you living for?  What do you want to pour your heart into?  What do you want to accomplish with your life?

One would hope that as a young man the bow would be aimed and the arrow released.  But that has not been the case.

Somewhere in the past I thought I knew sort of what I wanted and where I wanted to go.  Find a good wife.  Have a family.  Preach, teach, counsel.  That’s what the 20-year-old wanted.  To live a straight, clean, helpful life.

It’s a quarter of a decade later now, and as with any life, things happen.

Plans change.  Aspirations fail and fall aside.  Choices ferry us away from the path, and we lose track of time- and our original inspirations.  We make mistakes, we wander down side roads, we face trials and challenges, and we blink and then find ourselves far away from the path we once wanted to take.

In some of those side tracks, we discover people, talents and qualities that made our detours rich and rewarding.  In others, we find ourselves circling in eddies, beached by blindness or despair or brokenness, or wrestling with relationships that pull us deeper and deeper into dark thickets.

It’s easy to get lost in life.

And usually when you are lost, it’s because you’ve wandered far away from the question.

I am really happy for those of you who discovered the answer to the question long ago, and have been able to carve your lives out because of it.  I am pretty sure you are the happy and fulfilled folks I run into from time.  You are self-assured and content, not because you have solved all of life’s problems, but because you are at least following the path that is discerned by your heart.  You realize you are where you want and need to be in life.

I am also happy for those of you who may not have an answer to this question, but who also do not need an answer to this question.  I realize that this is not a question that needs a precise answer (to the fifth decimal place) for everyone, and that some of you are better at just gleaning joy and contentment from relationships and experiences in your life each day so that answering the question is unnecessary for you.  At times, I wish I was wired more like that.

I am not, though.  I need clarity.  I need the target.  I need the path.

And I do not want another 25 years to go by before I find it.

Clock’s a ticking.  Say a prayer for me, if you would.

“I recommend the following course of action for those who are just beginning their careers or for those like me, who may be reconfiguring mid-way through: Listen to Robert Frost. Start with a big, fat lump in your throat, start with a profound sense of wrong, a deep homesickness or a crazy love sickness and run with it. If you imagine less, less will be what you undoubtedly deserve. Do what you love, and don’t stop until you get what you love. Work as hard as you can, imagine immensities, don’t compromise, and don’t waste time. Start now. Not twenty years from now not two weeks from now. Now.”

~ Debbie Millman, “Fail Safe”

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Photo Credit: “Bird and Clouds” by Sam Javanrouh (Flickr). Under Creative Commons license.