Do You Need to Have a Purpose?
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I always thought it was important to have a purpose in life. A purpose is a handy thing to have when you need a reminder of why you need to get out of bed in the morning. It’s a fine thing to have in your hip pocket on those days when you say to yourself, “Why do I bother?”
I also believe purpose is especially valuable in the post-career life, especially for those people (primarily male) who channeled all their energies into their career. Once the career is over, they are likely to feel a gaping hole where career once held a place of prominence. Identifying a new purpose, it seems to me, is a necessary step to restore balance.
And finding a new purpose isn’t always easy. According to a survey of retirees by Edward Jones and Age Wave, about half of retirees say it takes them a while to find a new purpose in life. Another study from Washington University found that older adults with a sense of purpose were far less likely to experience loneliness.
The Contrarian View
Lately, though, I have seen several writers express a contrarian view – that the search for purpose is not only unnecessary, but maybe harmful to our happiness.
Elizabeth White, the author of 55, Underemployed, and Faking Normal: Your Guide to a Better Life, wonders whether the obsession with finding one’s purpose is just one more manifestation of our culture’s “relentless pursuit of achievement and impact in later life.” Psychologist and life coach Denise Taylor observes her friends feeling “this quiet pressure to land on a clear mission, as if we need to justify the next chapter with a sense of significance.” What if, she asks, we stopped trying so hard?
Even Richard Leider, whose best-seller The Power of Purpose is a classic text, writes that there is such a thing as “purpose anxiety – the fear of not knowing our purpose in life.” Often it is triggered “by life transitions like retirement, serious illness, divorce or breakup, or the end of a role or a new chapter in life.”
When I was researching my book The AfterWork: Finding Fulfilling Alternatives to Retirement, I was surprised by the number of people who said they had no particular purpose and were just fine with that. “I am not a purpose-in-life person,” one recent retiree told me. “It has never been a thing with me. I don’t feel purposeful or purposeless. It just isn’t an issue.”
Big-P and Little-p
I see some merits in both the pro-purpose and anti-purpose sentiments. I think the big difference in their positions is really the difference between big-P Purpose and little-p purpose.
Not everyone is looking for a big-P Purpose-driven life, White notes. “What if working in your garden is enough? Seeing your grandbabies. Volunteering to serve on your church’s community outreach committee. A little travel.” These she calls little-p purpose, and she suggests that they can be enough. “There’s got to be room in this purpose conversation for a smaller, quieter life, free finally from striving and ambition.”
Taylor comes to a similar conclusion. “We often imagine purpose as a single grand narrative, something noble or world-changing,” she writes. “But that narrow lens can feel paralyzing.” Instead, ”purpose can live in small acts. In being useful. In listening deeply. In giving time or care or attention without needing it to be grand….You don’t need a mission statement to live a meaningful life. Sometimes, being fully here is more than enough.”
Purpose anxiety, writes Leider, comes from the feeling that we are not enough, and it “significantly hampers well-being.” But it cannot be overcome “by sitting on the couch and mulling it over,” he adds. He suggests starting with little-p purpose, which may eventually add up to a big-P Purpose in time. “My hope is that you might find ‘little p’ purpose in the small and intentional daily choices that fill your 1,440 purpose moments every day.”
In other words, the debate is not about having or not having a purpose. It is between Purpose and purpose. The advocates for little-p purpose are suggesting you can live a meaningful life without making it your personal mission to achieve world peace, save the planet, or be a light unto the nations – goals that even Superman would have trouble achieving.
Not that there’s anything wrong with committing to a big-P Purpose, whether it’s leaving a legacy or leaving the world better than you found it. Just don’t let your Purpose become a source of anxiety and angst that keeps you from enjoying the miracle of simply being alive.
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