Is Having a Purpose In Life Bullshit?

A challenging essay about anti-rules for life

My friend Ann Hudspeth sent me this essay by Kate Forster called Why Having A Purpose In Life is Bullshit. As the title suggests, it’s mostly anti-rules, which I’ve written about before as being more useful than most of our platitudes. Sometimes the best advice is what not to do.

Forster’s essay was written for a friend who had just survived cancer. It’s a personal message offered to the public as possibly general advice. I’m shoehorning this essay into the goals of this book, rules for life, but I realize it was not Forster’s goal necessarily to publish this with that intention.

Here is Forster’s core message with my commentary:

1) Purpose is bullshit. What if I told you that your purpose right now is to be here… if you want to paint, paint. If you want to write, write. Bake bread? Do it. No wonder so many people feel like failures. Being told they have to have a ”purpose” makes them feel like they haven’t hit their KPI’s for life.

If you feel overwhelmed, failing at life or lost, this is good advice. It’s hard to feel good about being alive if you’re unmoored and overwhelmed. For Forster’s friend, or anyone recovering from a rough time, it makes sense. Carpe Diem. Momento Mori. I am a passionate believer in these ancient ideas. It’s often wise to fight for (or surrender to) the present moment.

The rub is that we have good evidence that people feeling they have a purpose is helpful. It’s anchoring to wake up knowing you have somewhere to go, someone to see and something to do. We have storytelling brains, and we want to feel we are part of system that makes sense and our role in it is clear. Purpose anchors us in goals that are larger than ourselves (e.g. “be a great ancestor to future generations”) and are often easily tied to community or generosity for others.

A better question is how to define a purpose for yourself that’s aspirational, actionable, and suited to your own personal goals, strengths and weaknesses. That last part requires self-awareness, which is hard for most people to discover. We pick purposes often based on shoulds, which often comes from other people and our sense of their expectations. The goal is thoughtful, useful, regenerative purpose that connects us, not dumb, misguided, unrewarding purpose that divides us.

2) Strive instead for a curiosity driven life. One where you try things, share them with the world or no one. There are no rules. The next thing you do, is to breathe. You have my permission, if you need it, to stop seeking and just be. Take the dance class. Go to the Galapagos Islands. Eat the snail. Learn the language. Join the choir. Pick up the racket.

I have lived a curiosity driven life in many ways, but it’s not for everyone. Curiosity creates risk and most people naturally don’t enjoy taking risks. When I’ve had major life crises I craved stability and safety, and needed them as anchors to recover my ambition. This might be Forster writing for her friend who perhaps wished they lived this way, which makes it good advice for them or anyone who truly needs this at the center of their life.

But I doubt I’d make something like a general rule for living. I need to think about this more as some people seem naturally curious (why?) and many people do not (also why?). We’re all curious as children, but then…. what happens? It only lives on in some of us it seems. In the same way everyone thinks they want to be creative, but really doesn’t (they want guaranteed success instead), this lands on me in a similar way.

That said: the golden rule (and especially the platinum rule) can only be successful with curiosity about other people’s feelings and needs. We definitely need more people to choose curiosity before judgement as we don’t seem wired for it (e.g. Ted Lasso).

3) Not everyone’s purpose is their job. Actually, very few people’s purpose in life is their job. We put too much pressure on our career to be everything and more. It’s actual fuckery, and is causing more and more depression in the world, because people feel… their job isn’t making them want to get up and punch the air with their ”awesomely, awesome life!”.

Sometimes I think America has this problem worse than other countries. We depend on our jobs for healthcare, and our minimum wage is not a living wage, so we’re not as free to live without worrying about our work. Americans are known for small talk that starts with “What do you do for a living?” meaning their profession, a topic that comes up later in conversation in the rest of the world. To not have work at the center of life means you know what else to center it on, but that’s a kind of work too, unless you are in a neighborhood that makes it easy to have hobbies, friends and community, which doesn’t seem to be common here.

And America invented, or at least popularized, the nuclear family, which shifted us away from the tribal, multigenerational lifestyle humans had depended on for thousands of years. This also contributed to moving our psychological anchors away from family and towards professional life (e.g. if grandparents can’t watch the kids, you need extra income to pay for daycare).

It seems Americans also have faith that everything is possible for themselves. We believe life should be amazing and that we can live our dreams. There are upsides to this, as America has an amazing history of invention and entrepreneurship. But with this faith comes unrealistic expectations and no psychological (or social) safety net for when those dreams never come true.

There is a scene from the Sopranos, one of my favorite shows, when Svetlana, an immigrant from Russia, tells Tony Soprano, “that’s the trouble with you Americans. You expect nothing bad to ever happen.” And when it does happen we feel it’s all our fault. We feel ashamed and we’re often judged. It’s the flaw of meritocracy, a curse really, that you are entirely responsible for everything that happens to you, good or bad. We ignore all of the factors for success and failure than we do not choose.

5) What I read from your voice when we spoke was the issue of worthiness. Why get cancer, survive, and then have nothing at the end of it all? What was it all for? It was for me. Your husband. The kids. Your family. Your friends. Your presence in our life is enough of a purpose. That shows us your worth. That isn’t to say that those who die from cancer weren’t worthy enough to stay, they were all worthy but you survived and survival was your purpose for a long time. That\’s enough.

This section spoke to me more than any of the others.

When I was young I’d go on vacation and see young surfers on the beach. They lived to surf and nothing else. Some even begged for change even though they were young and healthy. And I’d look down on them for not having any ambition. It seemed they were wasting their lives to me.

Now I think the opposite. They were enjoying themselves and harming no one. Whereas the average employee at any corporation likely participates in all kinds of harm to the environment, or to consumers, all in the service of profits and corporate growth. So much of daily adult life often involves selfishness and forced zero-sum equations in spite of the abundance of wealth we have in the world. Doing nothing and no harm like those surfers is far better in my eyes than what many of us feel we have to do to get by.

Self-worth and self-love seem like strange challenges (when the aliens land they would ask us how can a person not love themselves?) but when you start to see it as something in many people’s hearts it explains so much. We’re told we’re broken by churches and families, even though there was nothing ever wrong with us. That is, until we were lied to about our worth by the people we trusted. Being a good parent, a good friend, and a good neighbor have far more meaning to the world, and hopefully to ourselves, than most of what distracts us as commonly chosen forms of purpose.