I can’t find my purpose.
Have you seen it?
I’ve looked everywhere for it.
Featured image is an original piece of art
Several years ago I listened to an episode of a podcast – can’t remember the name of it now. The topic was finding your purpose after 50. The guest said whenever she heard that phrase, “finding my purpose,” she imagined a whole room full of people over 50, looking up, under coaches, and in closets. They would bump into another person and ask, “I can’t find my purpose, have you seen in?”
I’ve spent decades floundering about trying to figure out what to do with my life.
I walked the path set out for me by society and family. Marriage, kids, education, jobs, and now reaching retirement age.
Most women my age have walked the path that was not of their own design. When these paths end we stop, look around and wonder where do we go now?
Marriage ends, kids leave home, we may be caring for ailing parents, we are made redundant at our jobs, so now what?
It makes me think of my partners GPS in his Prius. She – we call her Trixie because sometimes she’s wrong – will tell us at a T in the road “Take a left at the end of the road.”
Wouldn’t that be great, when we come to the end of the socially sanctioned paths we could be told by a Trixie which way to go? Hey it’s been happening all our lives, why stop now.
I am almost at the age Social Security says I can collect – 62. However, if you’ve been following me a foundational regret I’m working on is my financial state. If I can’t retire what is my path then?
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Search finding my purpose, on Amazon and there are a gazillion books.
Do we need a purpose?
Amazon thinks we do.
I am going to say yes.
I think the problem many of us have, and the one I had, was thinking my purpose had to be this big grandiose show-stopping production.
But it doesn’t.
As I go back to the past regrets to live my life on purpose today, I’m flabbergasted at how simple it really is.
For decades I’ve been saying, “boy I sure would love to play the cello,” while at the same time thinking, “my life has no purpose.”
I picture myself sitting at my desk, head in my hands crying about my life and at the same time shooing away this pesky voice in my head, buzzing around like a fly whispering -” cello, cello, cello.”
That’s too simple.
Until I realized my purpose is for me, and me alone. We do not have to impress anyone with anything we do. Sometimes we just need to create that purpose for ourselves.
What purpose are you creating for you?
