”The Self That I Long to Believe In - The Challenge of Building Self-Esteem” - Part Four

Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

We all throw around the idea of having a purpose, or not having one, or wondering if we’re supposed to have one, or whatever we’re wondering. We wonder if we really need a purpose, and if so do we create it or does it already exist and we just haven’t happened to happen upon it just yet. For some of us, we think that the whole idea of having a purpose suggests that life is much more intentional than maybe we thought it was, and that maybe we’re all part of a grand design of some sort.

For others of us who tend to see life as more happenstance, it’s more about figuring out how we can figure ourselves in to whatever’s being figured out around us. In that sense, we create a purpose if what’s around us appears to make it worthwhile or possibly necessary to do so. However, or in whatever way we go about it, we all ponder this whole idea of having a purpose. For having a purpose gives us a desperate sense of purpose when our self-esteem would tell us that we serve none.

There’s something about life that doesn’t quite make sense without a purpose. There’s too much rhythm to life. There’s too much that seamlessly meshes, even when scrutiny of the most exacting kind would not be able to ascertain how it possibly could. There’s a beautiful and even mysterious connectivity that creates a dynamic unifying function, drawing everything together in some jointly corporate effort as a means of keeping everything moving and growing and flourishing. Even the darker side of life, perpetually roiling with its chaos and anarchy has an underlying cadence that maintains the darkness and feeds the destruction. Things have a place and a purpose in that place.

We Need a Purpose

Whatever the nature of our orientation might be, it seems that we need a purpose. There’s a lot of things that we talk about and discuss and debate and ponder and pontificate about in life. We analyze and scrutinize a whole bunch of stuff. And most of those discussions are really all about sizing all of that stuff up in order to determine if we want to engage in them or not. Do we want to invest in those things, or learn more about them, or build some part of them into our lives? Or do we categorize them as wholly irrelevant, blithely toss them aside, and move on from them to whatever the next thing’s going to be? Most of our discussions are a part of this bit of shopping that we’re doing in order to determine to if we want to purchase the product or pass on it.

But when it comes to purpose, it’s not about shopping. Shopping implies that we have a choice. It suggests that we’re leisurely strolling the endless aisles of life working out those endless decisions of whether we want to purchase something or not purchase something. There’s a sense that we can live with or without whatever it is that’s crammed onto the shelves that flank us on our left and on our right. The majority of these things are bright and shiny accessories that simply compliment what we already have or lend a bit of accent to what we already believe in. In the complimenting and the accenting, they don’t necessarily add to what we have nor do they detract from it. Most of them are appealing options designed to supplement something, not sturdy truths constructed to support something. We can take them or leave them without any major repercussions in the taking or the leaving. That’s most of life.

But purpose doesn’t appear to be a bright and shiny accessory. It’s not designed to ‘supplement’ anything because everything else is designed to supplement it. In fact, it’s not an item that we choose to select or not select. Purpose doesn’t leave us with the luxury of deciding whether we’ll choose it or whether we won’t. It’s inborn. It’s how we make sense of our existence as it’s played out within the rest of existence. We have meaning because there’s a role that makes sense of our existence and that serves to compliment everything else in existence. It’s simply not optional for purpose to be an option.

If we’re going to live with fullness, we have to be fully committed to seeking out and working out our purpose. Otherwise, we will exist with a gaping internal vacuum that will leave our lives ill-defined, or worse yet, undefined. And herein we often discover the source of our damaged, raw and bleeding self-esteem. We feel that we have no purpose and that can only mean that we have no value.

The Question Regarding Our Purpose

Therefore, the question regarding purpose is not “do we need one?” The question regarding purpose is far beyond any tangled debate as to whether one is necessary. We can engage in the rather diffuse and ever-shifting debate of whether we have a purpose. We can ponder the subject and bring it under the scrutiny of political leanings, emerging philosophies, wildly divergent doctrines, the voice of the important people in our lives, or other such assorted maladies. Regardless of the microscope under which we put it or the template that we force upon it, it’s not a question to be asked. Rather, it is a reality to be embraced.

Debates such as these often arise from those who would view life as this perpetually shifting expression of whatever they feel moved to express at any given moment. In such scenarios purpose gives way to the randomness of those who demand randomness as a platform to indulge whatever they wish to indulge whenever their mood moves them to indulge it. Or, it arises from those who tightly align the idea of ‘purpose’ with the belief in a Superior Being that orchestrated this existence and our place in it. Wanting to reject all such notions of a God in order to hold tight to the gospel of self-determination, they reject all such notions of a purpose (or at least a divine one). Arguments such as these can likewise arise from those believe there’s a purpose but fear the magnitude of it. In their minds, to know it and to pursue it is to risk failing at it. So, it’s better not to know.

In reality, the question of purpose is simple, direct, but inherently complicated. The question demands bravery. It rises on the belief that we have an utterly indispensable role to play in our own existence because it is not just our own existence. Fulfilling our purpose has an equally critical role to play in the existence of others. It is our part in this ever-unfolding corporate story that we have been granted an indispensable part in.

It is to understand that despite our own sense of unworthiness, we have been given a purpose. The fact that we have a purpose is not so shaky as to be dependent upon our belief as to whether we’re sufficient enough to have one. Quite the opposite. The fact that we have been granted a purpose evidences that we were worthy to have one. But more than that, we were sufficiently competent to play a role whose impact would move far beyond the limits of ourselves.

The Power and Scope of Purpose

To have a purpose is to possess power. For any purpose never begins and ends in itself. It is never that constricted, for then any purpose would be something so anemic that its very existence could not be justified. It never is held to the parameters of the life within which we live. Our purpose always moves out, as it never consolidates itself as a means of always moving in upon itself. Engaging in our purpose and working that purpose out has an influence far beyond the scope of the purpose itself. It is highly influential. It is the thing that builds upon the purposes of those around us, vigorously enhancing communities, nations and the global experience itself. To have a purpose is to possess power. And if we have been granted power of this sort, our value cannot be understated.

In fact, to not ask the question of what our purpose is, is to relegate our lives to mediocrity of the basest sort. It is to question the rationale of our existence as not existing. It causes us to debate the essence of who we are and what we’re supposed to do with who we are, which in fact questions everything that we are. We possess the power and the freedom to ask the question. And I believe that we’ve been granted that authority so that in the asking we might find the purpose. The question is, “What is my purpose?” The question is not, “Do I have one?”

It’s embracing that question and insistently asking it until we have the answer squarely in our hands so that we can begin to live it out squarely in our lives. That action both defines and breaks open our existence in ways few other things do. And it most certainly validates the worth of our existence in ways powerful and profound.

What “Purpose” Tells Us:

First, We’re More Than Just the Sum Total of Our Existence

The fact that we have a purpose evidences the fact that we are more than just the sum total of whoever it is that we are. A purpose says that we have a much larger role in this thing that we call life than just the living out of our individual lives. Life is bigger than any of us will ever be as an individual. Purpose tells us that we’re specifically designed to engage every bit of that expanse. Purpose tells us that everything that’s within us is designed to engage everything that’s outside of us, and there’s a whole lot out there. A purpose tells us that we are far more than just the sum total of our existence because we are called to do something in an existence that far exceeds us. A purpose tells us that we are more than just “us.”

Second, There is Something Greater Than Us That We’re Invited to Participate In

The fact that we have a purpose tells us that is ‘something else’ out there. It tells us that the horizons in life don’t come anywhere close to ending at the end of our existence as the single, solitary human beings that all of us are. The nature of purpose is such that it will always be bigger than us and it always live beyond us. It grants us the opportunity of legacy. It extends our influence beyond our own death when we’re no longer here to extend it. These unshakeable realities substantiate the fact that there’s more out there than we can possibly imagine. Purpose not only invites us out to embrace the wonder of imagining all of that, but it extends us a priceless invitation to actually step out into it. Gratefully, a purpose tells us that we are not the end of all that there is. In fact, ‘we’ are barely the beginning, and that in and of itself is wildly exciting. A purpose says that the ‘out there’ is far, far greater than the ‘in here.’ And it invites us out to freely run in it, to exuberantly play in it, and to potently transform all of it in the running and the playing.

Third, We’re a Piece of a Much Larger Puzzle That’s Would be Incomplete Without Us

Our purpose tells us that this massive world out there, as huge as it is, is sorely incomplete without us. As big and as enormous and as complicated and as intricate as the world is, it remains less than completely complete without us. We have a purpose in this world that only we can complete. Large or small, complicated or simple, breathtaking or life giving, regardless of what our purpose is, the world will be incomplete unless we fulfill it. That makes each and every one of us terribly important in ways that most of us never even consider, and few of us even remotely conceptualize. We are utterly irreplaceable which makes every one of us invaluable beyond any sort of monetary reckoning that we could hope to calculate. Everything that’s out there will be less than everything that’s out there if we forsake our purpose. And that fact makes us incredibly valuable.

Fourth, We Do Not Need to Surrender to the Mundane

Our purpose tells us that life is intentional. It is to live out something not in the frustration of random happenstance, but in something for which this life was purposely designed. It tells us that we have the power and the mission to vividly enhance life, rather than living in some terribly foreboding mindset while we sit on ‘pins and needles’ anxiously waiting to see how life is going to play itself out. There is a destination that has enough meaning and sufficient value to call us to the challenges that will certainly be part of fulfilling that purpose. That we are not here to aimlessly pass by and leaving nothing in the passing. To the contrary, our existence is designed to live on beyond our existence. To leave a bold legacy of generational impact. To fight against all that fights against us in order to create space and grant opportunity for all of the things that would wish to live within us to be expressed outside of us. And to do this for those in that walk beside us as well as those who will come behind us.

Fifth, We Can Deny It

Could it be that the first and foremost purpose of ‘purpose’ is to convince us that we have one? Is it likely that our purpose can only be fully manifest in a manner utterly transformational when we are convinced that we have a purpose to manifest? Possibly the most brilliant way that ‘purpose’ can do that is by granting us permission to deny that we have one. However rigorous the nature of the argument might be against having a purpose, we bring it to bear in our defense and we passionately pound whatever podium we’re pounding on in that defense. And any reasonable person would hold that if we’re putting so much thought, energy and passion into a defense of this sort, there must be something there to defend against. Therefore, it is our own arguments against having a purpose that substantiates our actually having one.

We Don’t Have to Create a Purpose, We Only Have to Find It

Purpose is not something that we create, or have to create, or can create. To do what it does, it must be exceedingly greater than what we could ever create it to be. It’s not something that we create because it eclipses our vision and it lays leagues beyond the scope of our creativity. If we’ve created something that we’ve defined as our ‘purpose’ and we’re chasing after whatever that is, what we’re chasing is probably a nice idea or some collection of ideas. But it’s not our purpose.

Rather, purpose is something that we find. It’s not about tediously constructing some sort of purpose out of the scattered pieces and errant parts of whatever we understand ourselves and our lives to be. It’s not about rummaging around the confines of our existence looking for ideas, or sitting and awaiting the arrival of one of those ever-elusive moments of inspiration. It’s not about figuring out how we build it or where we get the parts from in order to build it. God’s done that work already, and He’s done it with absolute perfection. Neither is it about about earning it, for it was always yours and it was never not yours. Your very existence unarguably speaks to the fact that you have one.

We just need to commit ourselves to finding it. Not earning it, but finding it. Not piecing it together, but discovering that it was never in pieces in the first place. Next to our search for God, seeking out our purpose is one of the most phenomenal adventures that we will ever have the privilege of undertaking. As we’ve noted, it’s a treasure hunt of the greatest sort. It’s an adventure that leaves all other adventures as largely adventure-less. It’s seeking out the very thing that we were designed to do. It undergirds and gives meaning to everything else. It is the rationale for our existence laid out on the table and explained. And it’s there to be found if we commit to the search.

We Were Made for Our Purpose

Once we begin to quit denying our purpose or quit attempting to manufacture it, the nature and fabric of it will begin to coalesce. With this ever-emerging clarity, we may well find ourselves increasingly paralyzed but subsequently awed by both the size and gravity of it. It’s imperative that we understand that what we are seeking is decidedly bigger than the sum total of who we are. In fact, if we dare to explore it fully it will eventually tower over us, for anything less is less than a purpose. It’s big because it’s supposed to be. It’s big because we were created big.

Therefore, the immensity of a purpose too often dictates the intensity with which we are prone to flee it. Yet, if we understand that we are explicitly built to perfectly mesh with this gloriously enormous thing that we call ‘purpose’, we begin to understand that we are finally at home in way we’ve never been at home before. We sit with something huge because we are created by a God Who is huger still. Therefore, to be paralyzed by the size is to miss the fact that a purpose is not to be managed. It is to be done. It’s not to be sized up. It’s to be lived out. And once we’re there, the size of our purpose becomes utterly exhilarating instead of profoundly intimidating.

To Not Seek Out Your Purpose is Only to Exist

Yet, many choose not to believe that they have a purpose, or they believe that they have one but don’t bother themselves with finding it. There are those of us who succumb to a life of mindless tedium, or a pathetic routine where we senselessly march in lock-step with a world around us that’s forsaken its purpose as well. There are those of us who readily embrace the pabulum of mediocrity which declares that things are about as good as they can get, so we’d better just settle for what we’ve got.

We surrender to a purposeless existence which is surrendering to death way ahead of death’s actual arrival. And the sad story around all of this is that the majority of people will walk the journey of life down a road flat, never ascending, and rarely challenging. Many of us will know nothing other than a directionless cadence, having left the footprints of our lives meandering down a road that’s meandering itself. Eventually the road will lead to wherever apathy and mediocrity pave it. And we can be certain that it will never lead to whatever our purpose was.

Your Purpose Awaits

You have a purpose. Despite your low estimation of yourself, you have a purpose. It stands eager and ready to be discovered. Purpose is never going to be so elusive that you can’t find it simply because purpose is deeply desirous of being found, seized, unleashed and ultimately achieved. In doing so, you will change your life and the lives of those around you, because when you embrace your purpose nothing less than change can happen. If you don’t seize your purpose, you will live out an anemic life and the world will be the poorer for it. Your existence will be of marginal effect, if any effect at all. And that reality is nothing short of tragic. It’s time to ask one of the largest questions that you will ever ask yourself. And that question is, “What is my purpose?” The fact that you exist endows you with the right to ask that question. So, let’s begin shaping and exploring that question.