What is Your "Purpose"? • Kari O'Driscoll

The older I get, the more anti-capitalist I get. Maybe this is what Gloria Steinem meant when she said women get more liberal as they age, or maybe it’s just a consequence of living in this time when all of the systems I was brought up to believe in as bedrock are crumbling beneath our feet. As I watch more people tumble into the cracks and see how institutions and governments just leave them lying there, it’s hard not to question everything.

When you can wake up to news of horrible acts that people in power perpetrate on other people – police officers and elected officials and entire countries – and still be expected to answer emails and create marketing materials and shop for new shoes as if none of it is shocking, it’s a little hard to swallow all of the things we were told would ensure us a good life, a solid life, a safe life.

Two days ago, I saw a meme that encouraged parents to “normalize asking high school kids what they want to do after school instead of asking them which college they want to go to.” I get it. Not all kids are college-bound, and pretending that they are can add a lot of pressure. But what if we stopped asking kids about their future plans at all? What if, instead, we asked them what they’re enjoying about their lives right now? What if we stopped pretending that there is some predictable set of systems out there for us to plan within and just encouraged kids (and frankly, everyone,) to look around and assess what is good in their lives in this minute that they can do more of?

I suppose it was this sentiment that was sitting in the back of my brain yesterday when I was on a weekly call with the Charter for Compassion and Citizen Discourse and the facilitator asked us to connect with our inner younger self and have a conversation with them about what they wanted us to be right now, or what they wanted to be when they hit the age we’re at currently. Most of the participants on the call went to that age-old question we all ask little kids, “what do you want to be when you grow up?” and my mind did, too, for a split second. But then, the anti-capitalist in me rebelled and my inner child spoke loudly:

Play. Make people food. Make them laugh.

Give lots of hugs. Help clean up when there’s a mess.

Snuggle with animals. Grow plants and flowers. Sing.

Climb trees every once in a while just to see what things look like from up there.

Talk to people. Listen to kids. Try new things. Rest.

Lay in a hammock. Watch and see how things work when they’re left alone.

Maybe it’s because I know myself well enough now to know that I would never have been the kind of person to have one career that spanned most of my adult life. Or maybe it’s because I realize that, at least in our culture, so much of our identity is built around the kind of paid work we do and that rubs me the wrong way. Perhaps it’s because for most of my adult life, the vast amount of labor I did was unpaid (mothering, caregiving, running a household) and it somehow meant I was less important, less valued by society. Or maybe it is because my aspirations for myself now revolve around the kind of person I want to be, the way I want to show up in the world, how I want other people to feel when they are with me. Whatever the reason, that list above feels like a pretty damn good way to focus my efforts.

I don’t honestly believe that any of us showed up on this planet to work, to have a career, to get paid to do labor. Somewhere along the way, we got lost in all of the rhetoric and expectations, the idea of money as a thing that was important enough to lose relationships over, lose time to, lose ourselves for. We began to believe that our purpose and our passion align with producing tangible things for other people to purchase instead of learning how to be in relationship with ourselves and others and the natural world. My reason for being has nothing to do with making money and everything to do with using my gifts to enrich and enhance the lives of myself and every living thing around me. My value does not lie in the amount of classes I can teach, the income I can generate, the number of books I sell. My value lies in my generosity of spirit, my willingness to keep learning, my curiosity, and my love for other human beings.

These systems we were taught to spend our lives toiling to uphold will not hold us up when we fall. They have shown that over and over again in the past two years. Unhooking from them and creating new ways of being can only free us to do the things we are truly meant to do together.

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