The Surprising Power of Purposelessness

Mar 27, 2018

 

If I had a dollar for every woman who has asked me to help her find her purpose,

I would be a “six figure coach.”  Ha!

 

There was a time when women would ask me this

and I would practically salivate.

 

After all, I felt as though I had found my purpose,

and it felt really good.

 

I thought it would also feel really good to help other people find theirs.

I wrote blog posts about purpose, and hell, I still have a (yet to be edited!) exercise in my online program, SeaCHANGE, that is all about finding your purpose.

 

But I’ve changed my tune.  Here’s why:

 

 

Most of the women who have come to me searching for their purpose have been in deep distress.

They feel lost, aimless, and sometimes even worthless because they don’t know why they’re here.  Like, on earth.

There are a great many coaches and other entrepreneurs who actually kind of love hearing this from potential clients.  In marketing speak, this kind of distress is called a “pain point,” and the deeper the pain, often, the deeper the pockets of the person who will do anything to resolve it.

It’s no surprise, then, that a great deal of money is spent by a great number of folks to convince us that we all need a purpose and you suck if you don’t know your purpose, and knowing your purpose will magically solve all your problems.

 

In working with so many women who want to find their purpose, I’ve noticed a few key themes (other than generalized feelings of despair and confusion):

 

–>  They often define their purpose in terms of finding occupational bliss.  That is, they feel as though they will find their purpose through their work.

–>  When probed further, women’s desire to find their purpose often has more to do with how they define themselves and, albeit perhaps unconsciously, their social utility, in the world.  Having a purpose, for many, is about having a smart one-liner about what they were put on earth to do.

Snappy categories like this are valued by our capitalist society where we witness, thousands of times a day, various companies and entrepreneurs attempting to sum up their purpose quickly and dynamically so as to stand out in a flooded market.  But snappy categories aren’t just about selling goods and services:  they’re about being able to succinctly define who you are and therefore where you belong (and that you belong).

And we all want to belong.

 

But here’s the thing.

I don’t know about you, but as I get older and possibly wiser, I have less and less tolerance for thoughts, behaviours, people, circumstances and cultural messages that cause suffering toward me and the people I love and work with.

 

And so I started questioning the idea of purpose.

 

The underlying narrative that I was hearing as I was holding space for the pain of women’s experiences of purposelessness was

I am not enough.

And I recognized that narrative immediately.

It’s the one that is incessantly perpetuated by the patriarchal, capitalistic culture within which we live.

 

The idea that we need a purpose in life

(and that we need to define it in some way)

is fundamentally rooted in the idea that we aren’t worth much to the world if we don’t have one.

It’s rooted in the idea that just being isn’t good enough.

That we must do and achieve and hustle for our worth.

 

 

And don’t get me wrong:  it is really lovely to see people who are on purpose.  People who are singularly focused on a personal mission are awe-some to witness.  They do good things in the world.

But I think it’s time for the rest of us to stop thinking we’re somehow not as good as they are.

That we’re lost

and value-less.

That we need to justify our existence to the rest of the world.

 

Because I also think Purpose can be incredibly limiting.

–>  Purpose’s common association with vocation is a remnant of our work-and-productivity driven culture, and ignores the value of all the other incredibly important roles we play as mothers, activists, friends, community members, makers, and sisters.

–>  Purpose ignores our complexity.  It asks us to oversimplify our talents, curiosities, experiences, and capabilities.

–>  Purpose feels really big, and big things are hard to move.  It’s natural for us to evolve (and it’s kind of boring when we don’t), and being attached to Purpose as a Definition of Self can manifest feelings of failure and crisis if, due to completely normal shifts in our life circumstances and worldviews, your so-coveted Purpose no longer resonates.

 

And so I wonder what it would feel like to delete “Find My Purpose” from your to-do list

 

and start wondering if maybe you’re good enough as you are.

Just you

taking out the garbage, making a lasagna for a friend in need, reading to your children.

Maybe the idea of this feels freeing

 

but it could also feel scary.  

After all, we have enormous amounts of social conditioning and personal narrative that warn us against the despondency of purposelessness.

 

But if there’s any part of you that senses, as I do,

that purposelessness may actually be more powerful

more full of possibility

than a life spent searching for something that might happen

outside of the sacred mundane

of taking out the garbage, tending to a friend in need, raising children

then I wonder...

 

What might happen if you embrace the surprising power of purposelessness?

The Becoming Podcast has been on a short hiatus while I focus on writing my book, but oh what a comeback episode I have for you!

This month, I spoke to Toko-pa Turner, who many of you may know as the unofficial patron saint of many of my circles and gatherings because of the sheer number of times I’ve quoted from the wisdom of her book, Belonging.

Toko-pa is a Canadian author, teacher, and dreamworker. Blending the mystical teachings of Sufism in which she was raised with a Jungian approach to dreams, she founded The Dream School in 2001, from which thousands of students have graduated. She is the author of the award-winning book, Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home, which explores the themes of exile and belonging through the lens of dreams, mythology, and nature. This book has resonated for readers worldwide, and has been translated into 10 different languages so far. Her work focuses on the relationship between psyche and nature, and how to follow our inner wisdom to meet with the social, psychological, and ecological challenges of our time.

Here’s some of what Toko-pa and I talk about in this episode:

> The dream that changed Toko-pa’s life, causing her to question her career and, ultimately, her identity

> How we can court our dreams to support us during times of radical transformation – and the reasons so many of us have a hard time remembering and working with what shows up in our dreamscape

> Toko-pa’s perspective on the message of Belonging after the divisiveness our society has experienced in the years since it was published

> What happened for both Toko-pa and I when we fell out of belonging from the ideologies of the “wellness world”

> How to build community when you’re under-resourced

> “The Big Lie” when it comes to belonging, and how we can reclaim a sense of belonging to the greater family of things, as Mary Oliver so famously wrote

Listen to the episode on iTunes

 

Show Notes

Toko-pa’s Website

Belonging:  Remembering Ourselves Home, Toko-pa’s book

The David Abram video about animism mentioned in the interview

Toko-pa’s self-guided program, Dream Drops

Companion, the program that accompanies Belonging

 

Also, while you’re at it, if you enjoy The Becoming Podcast, I would be so grateful if you would rate and review, and even subscribe to it on iTunes.  That goes a long way to helping more and more people find and benefit from hearing these interviews!  Thank you so much!