So I tried to explain to my 3-year-old Ava what "the purpose" of something is. For example the purpose of a refrigerator is to keep things cold. The purpose of a car is to carry people around from place to place. The purpose of a fork is to pick up food. However things became very hazy (i.e. Daddy became stumped) when I tried to explain what the purpose of a person was. There are some easy ones. For example, apparently the purpose of a grandparent is to spoil a granddaughter and give her popsicles even when her father thinks she doesn't especially deserve one.
But if Ava had asked me "what is your purpose, Daddy?" I would have had a real problem. Because honestly I don't know what my purpose is. Is my purpose to raise my kid? To work my job? To love my wife? All the above? Or am I meant for some "higher" purpose, like inventing a new form of power, or building water purification devices for people in the Third World, or curing cancer? It's a scary notion to accept that I really don't know the answer to that. I wake up most days, go to work, come home, hang out with my family, and go to bed having not once wondered how the activities of that day fit into a larger scheme for my life. I'd end the day never having asked myself whether I had really made any progress on my life's purpose. Of course this realization is unacceptable. I should have a purpose!
So I picked up my Bible to see if God could help me find a purpose for my life. Of course, the answer had been right in front of me the entire time.
A teacher of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him: "Of all the commandments, which is the most important?" Answered Jesus: "Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength. And Love your neighbor as yourself."
It turns out that my purpose is the same as yours, the same as everyone's: to love. Maybe at the end of the day I shouldn't be asking myself if that day was part of some grand cancer-curing process, or if that day had been spent working toward building an engineering empire. Instead, at the end of the day I should simply stop and ask myself "Did I love today?" And this is true for all of us. Our lives, careers, families, and personal goals are all highly varied, but this one purpose is universal among us all.
Helen Keller once wrote that happiness comes from "fidelity to a worthy purpose." What worthier purpose is there from which to derive happiness than a consistent and overt attempt to love each and every person we meet? It certainly isn't easy. But a worthy life's purpose shouldn't be easily accomplished. A life's purpose should be something challenging, radical, and noble. But most importantly, having "to love" as a purpose allows us to measure our progress each and every day. Maybe some days we won't make progress, we'll regress. For example when I was cut off on the highway this morning and then almost rear-ended someone...I definitely did not love. But I've got the rest of the day to work on it. And the rest of my life too.
By the way, I did a better job at loving on the drive to work this morning. So, there's progress.
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