After the initial decompression that happens after stopping work, you begin to settle in a routine which is very different to the one you led for the last few decades. One stand out characteristic is that, for the first time in your life, no-one demands anything of you.

This is a jarring feeling. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, there’s only one thing worse than being pulled in all directions, and that’s not being pulled in any direction.

Internally, purpose is ours alone to define. Purpose can give shape to intention, which in turn can drive direct and specific action. My purpose in life is to feel connected to others. The fulfillment of purpose starts with my intentions: community engagement, participation, an exchange of ideas. Intention is a basis for specific actions or behaviors: I attend a community townhall, an event at my child’s school, or participate in an indieweb carnival.

Action without intention is random or impulsive. Intention without purpose may be misdirected or unsatisfying. Purpose unsupported it is little more than the foreshadowing of regret.

for years, my sole objective— as i am very dramatic— was to become the best bookseller in my country. the thing is: to be a bookseller, you have to work your 40h/week shift and spend most of your free time reading for work (understand: working).

my work became my purpose. i read over 100 books a years, as much manga volumes i counted separately (different reading diaries), my clients became my friends (that’s good). i was a bookseller before i was jude.

Things can also go against us. The purpose of the nuclear bomb has always been sold to us as a way to keep peace, to keep our enemies away through intimidation. But a bomb can be re-purposed at any time to commit intentional unprovoked genocide, and that is the real fear we all live under with the spectre of a bomb hanging over us, and the unpredictable but strangely empowered loose cannons with whom we share the Earth.

And if you buy the latest iPhone every year, subscribe to all the streaming services and pay top dollar for sugar-bombed ultra-processed bottom-shelf products, then you’re just enabling those companies by giving them your money, to create value for the shareholders. Which, ironically, is your purpose as well.

And if you can break the cycle and reuse old hardware, embrace sailing the high seas of Internet piracy and learn to shop local and support small businesses nearby, then maybe there’s a chance the human race will survive, one human being at a time.

I’m thinking about all of this as I look at the notion of retirement. I’ve been working for three decades. I’ve got another decade, maybe two, in me before I retire. I’d like to retire before I’m too old and frail to enjoy it. I want to travel, to read, to listen to music, and to enjoy a quiet morning with my spouse with no agenda and no obligations. Do I need a purpose when I retire? Can my purpose be to not have a purpose?

The more I think about this, the harder it becomes to distinguish between discovering purpose and creating it. Perhaps that only matters if we believe we stand outside the forces that shaped us. If our aims stem from biology, experience, relationships and circumstance, then purpose may be neither found nor chosen but is continuously taking shape from what we are and what we encounter.

There are things too that you can consider so valuable that you are even instinctively drawn to do them: passions, obsessions. These are things that you value so much you can’t not do them. You’re always thinking about them, always thinking of how to do them better, always itching to spend every spare hour and minute doing them. I suppose the question there is: how much do you want to sacrifice for your purpose? There are other things that are purposes, too, like maybe doing the dishes, or seeing friends, that you might want less than your passionate obsession, yet there’s value in doing those things as well.

We can claim that the purpose of the system is to be equitable, beneficial and provide opportunities for all, but if, instead, the system entrenches discrimination, disadvantage, and exclusion, the system itself needs to change, not just its intentions.

The question isn’t, “How do we fix it?” The question is what would it take to close the gap between what a system claims to do and what it does?

The purpose of a customer support team (or at least the good teams) has never been answering basic customer questions. Those questions are only the most easily quantifiable and measurable expression of customer support. They’re only the shadow on the cave wall of your customer’s experience.

The purpose is to do all of these, and more, not because they’re easy, but because they are hard, and they’re making them even harder for you to do – physically and mentally. Connect with others, get tired together, because it’s more rewarding, and because it could actually change something for the better.

Or do nothing. Instead of participating, instead of “yes”, say “no”. Sometimes allowing yourself to do nothing is the most radical thing you can do.

The purpose of paper is the purpose many. Of those who wish to break or make the world at will with the stroke of a pen. The purpose of my paper; to be witness of my existence, translator of my inner workings, historian of my testimony, confident of my deepest secrets.

Another purpose is to support my favorite artists and groups who have worked hard in their creations. Thankfully, I can find a bunch of freely and legally downloadable media from Bandcamp, itch.io, and the like. While financial support is completely optional, it can be helpful for those who want to continue their creative pursuits.

That’s a bigger question than I expected to run into while writing a blog post. Do we have a purpose in anything? You expect a simple answer and instead you get more questions.

Is breathing a purpose? I don’t think so. Breathing keeps me alive, but I never chose it and I never think about it. That’s just a function, like a heart beating. It’s not a choice and it’s not a reason, it’s just what a body does. At first, purpose felt like it had to involve choosing something, not just running on autopilot.

Evolutionary purposes can be driven in a form of survival and helpful (perceived) mutual benefits between two species, or purpose might just come up as a happenstance because it is easy to make and the benefits aren’t known until later. To co-opt a different August submission, purpose can come after the thing exists.

What is purpose then? I struggle here, because purpose is not a plural. We as people are complex beings, yet we cannot multi-task, and we are forever taking in new information. Maybe if you value narrow-expertise (master of one, jack of nothing else), and dedicate your life to one thing, then you could say “”My purpose is to do or be x””.

I want to live bigger than that.

Without shedding a single tear, I already feel lighter. Is the purpose of suffering to define happiness by its very existence? Can one exist without the other?

Each day, the pragmatic and practical becomes a deeper, darker chasm. I am somebody who attempts to take a broad, lengthwise view of things. The sight from the long horizon.

And yet, here I am writing with velocity and frantic compulsion for months in the now. A steep voice in my mind reminds me how precious and violent life is. Fragile and finite and to not take any moment for granted. As though I can visualize the red, blinking numbers counting down how many seconds I have, pulsing above my head.

Online spaces are more artificial than they have ever been, although there was never anything particularly natural about talking through screens in the first place. I think part of the panic comes from believing online communities could replace the human connection of actually being next to other humans. I believed that myself at one point, so I don’t fault anyone for it. I’m not saying the people you meet online aren’t real; of course they are. But being surrounded by their messages is not the same thing as being next to them.

The people are still there, they’ve always been.

Why is it that so many people end up spending so much of their lives trying to find some purpose or higher calling to just to justify their existence?

Is it truly some grand achievement, to have found some purpose, or is it simply something more mundane and innate than that?

I try to remember to just try stuff. Do things that don’t seem to have any purpose. Or where the only purpose is it might be fun. (It might not be fun, in fact. But I will have done something new.) Write bad novels. Do ‘pointless’ things. Reject purpose. Embrace chaos.

And I want to increase the amount of that kind of discovery and access in the world. I want to share myself but also build communities where we share with open doors and at least trying to do more to reach people in demographics that might not have access to that information and those social circles.

To me, doing the opposite often feels I would be pulling up the ladder after myself. I got a lot from this culture of open sharing but now I want to keep it to myself and the group I’m part of. Reality is somewhere in between of course.

Yet this had been a better signpost to what to do and how to structure my life than purpose.

But I think the biggest reason of why I don’t like a purpose is, that I feel like it treats the humans as if they were tools while ignoring the consequences of the actions.