In Search of Purpose

The evenings are getting darker. Winter has arrived, native at this point.

If you’re following the American Dream – enduring a nine-to-five in hope of securing a comfortable future for a family that is yet to exist – the gloomy nightmare is a reality.

Any free time you have away from work, the crack of dawn and the when the sun retires, are spent in darkness. You question your alarm’s calling that echoes dawn’s black veil.

By the time the sun has come to roost, your mind is engrossed in your work. Slaving yourself behind the stitches of a cheap unfitted shirt in attempt to seek one’s approval – or avoiding disappointment – hard to tell.

You have finished your hard day’s work – as you have done every day since the start – but that warm sense of accomplishment has grown faint and rare with experience.

When you walk out that door the sun has already set sail. No time for you. Start home.

These conscious hours in our winter season are spent almost entirely in darkness. Shy men in lab coats armed with clipboards and numbers will ambush any passer-by with stiff warnings of vitamin D deficiencies.

But this hazy blanket of despair covers matter of more importance. This level of darkness is not good for one’s mind. We are not designed to experience this climate.

There is nothing pressing that needs me awake early tomorrow, hence my sitting here just shy of three a.m.

I can afford to sleep until the late morning. Despite not having a job at the moment, I find my days are well encumbered, with little time left for reflection.

It is moments of reflection like this that important thoughts our conceived.

My current employment situation is a result of my own decisions; a questionable choice at first and moist with overwhelming anxiety at times. My belief in the practice of regret is on par with my belief in luck, talent and any form of religion. Regret does not exist.

But the revelation of comfort and security is something that brought me a great deal of fear.

My telesales career was short lived, but eventful. I wouldn’t be surprised had I spoke to more individuals in those 11 months than I have done in my 21 years of living. Some fascinated me. Others repulsed me. But the majority were merely floating through life in a desperate subconscious attempt to discover their purpose.

Even with the most cynical side of me in it’s element on these winter evenings, I can find no fault in that job. The people were welcoming and full of energy, the benefits were ludicrous and I was being over paid to do an entry level job. What more could a white, middle class student want?

Purpose.

To put that in perspective, imagine leaving your six bedroom New York apartment in search of Heliconia flowers in the Amazon, wearing nothing but the skin in which you were born and no prospect of getting home.

It was around the earliest days of September when the doubtful thoughts began to creep. They came at an unexpected time. My performances at work were consistently growing, and I had more money than I knew what to do with it.

I was safe. No need to do anything else in life in order to support myself. No real ambition for change. Any other part-time roles would see my income cut, never mind the loss of benefits. I only worked 20 hours a week (30, if you include travel), leaving me with a flexible 82 hours (on a 16 hour day average) to do whatever I wanted.

But when you have all of these things in your life, what else would you want to do?

Things became so twisted, that when I wasn’t working, I deserved to allow myself down time – a relaxing reward for everything I was accomplishing in work.

But in those early days of September, it hit me; I was accomplishing nothing.

I needed to revaluate my life. Why was I existing?

There I was, feasting on oxygen 24/7 to keep myself alive.

But was this the life I wanted to live?

When I started writing this, I had no predisposed plans or structure in place. As you read with me, you learn with me.

 

But what now? To where do I go from here? There are no ships of Purpose setting sail this morning; the caterpillar must be the creator of its own flight.