Choosing the next piece before you can see the whole.
Having a grand life purpose is lovely. It really is. Many do. Many don’t.
But we put enormous pressure on ourselves when we set out to identify the one great calling that directs and explains our lives.
Do you think you’re supposed to identify this one great calling that explains your life?
This is the tyranny of the grand purpose: if you can’t identify your overarching purpose, you may feel unfulfilled and purposeless.
Purpose is important. I don’t aim to diminish its value.
A sense of purpose can make us feel useful, connected, and needed. It gives shape to our days and helps us know where to put our attention. It gives us reasons to act and connects today to tomorrow.
But discovering your grand purpose doesn’t determine whether you’ll make a great life.
Paying attention to your day-to-day purpose—the small-p purposes—may actually serve you better.
Most lives run on small-p purpose.
And that’s why life changes like divorce, death, an empty nest, or job loss can feel so disorienting.
Life change doesn’t merely take away a person, job, or role. It can take away the organizing why of our days.
This raises a question: do we find our purpose—or do we create it?
A friend who is involved in a divorce has lost, or is leaving, several structures that presumably organized her life and gave her a sense of purpose for more than 20 years.
She came to our small town to stay with family during the transition.
She’s working at a local restaurant.
She joined a Bible study group.
She’s reading to help enlarge and organize her thoughts and her vision of her potential future.
She’s connecting with people.
She’s building a life inside the uncertainty before she knows exactly what her next life will look like.
That’s not filler while she waits for purpose. That may be how purpose is being created.
And perhaps that’s the important part.
She isn’t waiting to know what her new life will be before she begins living it. The restaurant, Bible study, books, and new connections aren’t placeholders until she discovers her purpose.
They are giving shape to her days now.
And they may be how she discovers what she wants her life to become.
Or they may be part of what she wants her life to become.
Because most of us actually experience purpose on a much smaller scale than the grand overarching vision for our lives.
Purpose doesn’t have to be enormous to be powerful.
Purpose can be raising a child. Building a company. Caring for someone. Writing a book. Serving a community.
But it can also be:
I have people coming to my house Wednesday and I want them to feel welcome.
I’m going to help this puppy grow into a good dog.
I’m going to write something each week that might help somebody see her life differently.
I’m going to make a home here.
These smaller purposes organize behavior. They get us out of bed. They tell us what deserves attention. They connect today to tomorrow.
And when life has been disrupted, a modest purpose may provide the first bit of structure around which a larger life begins rebuilding.
You don’t need to know exactly what the next ten years look like. You need something that matters enough today to move toward.
Purpose is not the same as a goal.
A goal gets completed.
Purpose keeps generating goals.
You can finish writing an essay.
You don’t finish being a writer.
You can host a Wednesday Bible study.
You don’t finish creating community.
You can train Percy, my puppy, to come when called.
You don’t ever finish caring for him.
Purpose provides the why that keeps producing the next what**.**
And when an old purpose disappears—a career ends, children leave home, a marriage ends, someone we love dies—we can experience far more than the loss of the person or role. We can lose the organizing why of our days.
But where does the new why come from?
Perhaps purpose works in both directions.
Purpose → action.
When you know what matters, purpose gives you direction and helps organize your choices.
Action → purpose.
What if purpose isn’t something you find before you begin? What if purpose is something you discover partly by moving?
Last week, I wrote about courage, anxiety, and the willingness to cut the damn cake—to act before we have certainty that we’re doing the right thing.
I hadn’t realized until a reader pointed it out that the same idea applies to purpose.
We can wait for purpose to reveal itself completely before taking action. But sometimes purpose becomes clearer because we acted.
The first step creates information that waiting never could.
You begin. You pay attention. You notice what energizes you, whom you care about, where you’re useful, what you want more of, and what matters enough to continue.
You don’t necessarily need to discover your life’s great purpose. You may need to choose something that matters now and begin living toward it.
Maybe that’s how a life gets built or even rebuilt—not by figuring everything out and then proceeding, but by participating in life while it is still unresolved.
Sometimes purpose gives us direction before we know the destination. And sometimes moving is how we discover the direction.
Warmly,
Susan
Continue the Conversation
The conversation doesn’t end with these weekly essays.
Many of the ideas I explore here continue in Substack Notes—in observations, questions, and ordinary moments that sometimes become the beginning of a future essay.
I share those thoughts in Substack Notes, where readers add their own experiences and perspectives. Some of my favorite conversations happen there.
If you’d like to join me, I’d love to meet you in Notes.
And this week, I’d love to know:
What is giving your days a sense of purpose right now?
I’d love to hear what you discover in the comments.
💯 Susan. I think what you are saying is that by doing we find meaning, which helps to discover purpose, little bit by little bit. It’s a philosophy I’ve recently discovered, having recently created completed and MSc in Consciousness, Spirituality & Transpersonal Psychology.