YOU’RE made to contemplate this question a lot especially during “empowerment” workshops and self-help seminars.
Some people have the answer right away, maybe they are career-driven and they see themselves as successful doctors, lawyers or businessmen. Maybe they want to escape the 9-to-5 life by making new business innovations.
Some people could be driven by the arts; maybe they want to be famous for their crafts, or they just want to accept commissions at their comfortable pace. They could view their talents either as therapy or an income generator.
Then, there are the people who are driven by advocacies; they thrive on community service and fundraisers. Maybe they truly do it out of concern for others, or they do it to compensate for a lavish lifestyle.
Whether it’s for the benefit of others or for their own gain, people start developing their personal sense of “purpose”.
Then, there are some people who get inspiration from Disney’s “Soul” and live for the sake of living. Maybe they don’t have lavish dreams and they are content with enjoying the simple things in life like binge-watching Netflix or having a fun afternoon with friends.
However, there is another group of people who we usually don’t think about when we discuss our “purpose”. These are the people who don’t have the resources to be career-driven or the luxury to enjoy the little things in life.
How about the people who sleep by the side of the road and don’t even have a roof over their heads? The kids who only know hunger their whole lives just to meet an untimely end by disease or accidents?
We only think about the “purpose” of the people who have the resources to help, what about those that receive help? Are they destined to be recipients of pity and abuse?
Maybe you’re thinking they can pull their life together with the assistance they receive, but that’s easier said than done when their food rations can barely give them energy to think, much less pull themselves out of poverty.
So, the next time we think about our “purpose”, let’s be thankful we can even spare energy to worry about that. Some people don’t have that much luck./PN
