The Power of Purpose

Spend a mere 5 minutes with almost any toddler and you will quickly grow sick of a simple three letter word: why. They will leave you struggling to find an explanation for why the sky is blue, and if you entertain their barrage of questions long enough, you’ll eventually run out of answers, having lost the battle of wits. What is it about the word “why” that gives it such a disquieting amount of power to someone who barely knows their ABC’s? Perhaps it is because the answer to the question “why?” begins with “because…”, and that “because…” is the very fiber of our individualism: our purpose.

There’s a pandemic spreading like wildfire through our society, and it has been for some time. No, I’m not talking about COVID-19 again. This pandemic has a clear-cut definition and is suffixed by the ominous “-ism”. It is nihilism. A Google search will provide you with the aforementioned definition, which explains with astonishing brevity that nihilism “…argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value.” For a nihilist, then, the answer to “why?” is as simple as a shrug of the shoulders or, for the more well-versed, “why not?”. Staunch nihilism is rarely encountered by most of us, especially those reading in a similar environment to which I’m writing (comfort of a religious, privileged home in the Midwestern United States). This unapologetic dismissal of an individual’s purpose is radically extreme, and personally a little disheartening. With that being said, I believe each person has their own unique purpose, and that purpose is the individual’s often elusive answer to the “why” of our everyday lives.

A little self-reflection is all that is required to push most people – myself included – toward a borderline existential crisis. Think about who you are. How would people describe you? More pressing, what would people describe you as? I am a student-athlete with medical school aspirations, a loving family, and myriad hobbies and interests. With that in mind, I spend a good chunk of time being studious, training for my sport, being with family, etc. These things, however, are not intrinsically easy, as I’m sure your defining characteristics are not effortlessly sustained. Calculating the slope of a line as a junior in college seems frivolous, running more than a few miles at a time is undoubtedly awful, and the interrogation of a loving father at the end of a long day can be torture. These words: frivolous, awful, torture, are not words generally correlated with deriving hedonistic pleasure. Why, then, do we regularly and willingly subject ourselves to these tribulations? Because we are presciently aware of the fact that the future these things promise is worth the trouble. That is what it means to have a purpose in life and in the things we do.

Existing with purpose is simply an exercise in bargaining. Every decision we make is a trade-off, with each decision ideally serving our individual or group purpose. It follows, then, that the more convicted you or your group is in its purpose, the easier the decision.

In this post, I want to explore a few facets of life that many of us are well accustomed to. These are academics, athletics, and family. If none of these apply to you as an individual, I encourage you to read on, as we are all more alike than we seem.

ACADEMICS

Nearly every profession is accompanied by a few objective requirements. These are things that everyone needs in order to pursue a career in that field, and they range from work experience to education to physical capabilities. To earn the status of a physician is to follow a very strict plan and set of guidelines that every medical student for many years has unquestioningly abode by. Work hard in high school to get to college. Obtain a college degree (preferably in a STEM field) with a good GPA, shadowing, experience, volunteer work, and extracurricular activities in order to earn a coveted spot in medical school. All of these steps are vitally important, and must be diligently adhered to by every prospective physician. These steps, however, are just a small piece of the puzzle. They detail how to become a doctor. Equally important, although strangely detached from the how, is the why.

Some children are told early on, directly or otherwise, that they aren't smart and shouldn't aspire to do much after government-mandated education is complete. Generally, this removes any desire to succeed in school and deprives a young mind of a very powerful purpose. Other children, on the contrary, are constantly reminded how bright they are, which commonly instills an internal drive and yearning to hear this praise again. Being intelligent and earning accolades becomes their purpose, and they're likely to find objective success in their schoolwork. Of course there are anomalies to both scenarios, but they are merely the exceptions that prove the rule. Depriving a young mind of a reason to succeed and an academic purpose is a great atrocity, and one that can be easily sidestepped. Without a why, how can students even begin the process of how.

I've had the pleasure of interviewing at some of America's highly esteemed corporations, such as Chick-Fil-A and Papa John's, and as I'm sure many of you can attest, one of the most important questions requires an oftentimes fabricated answer. Why do you want to work here? If everyone answered honestly, it would instantly render this question pointless. I didn't subject myself to minimum wage and cantankerous customers because I had an "undying passion for service", I did it for the paycheck, and I trust I'm not alone in this sentiment. In this case, money was my purpose. Money - more specifically the things I could do with the money I made - was my why and patience through mind-numbing hours was my how. I believe money is a primary motivator for most people as they wade through life, but it simply won't be enough to motivate someone to endure the years of arduous, post-secondary education required for most professional careers. A more substantial purpose is needed.

We've established that how one attaches "M.D." to the back of their name is fairly uniform and unchanging from person to person. What is unique to every individual, though, is their own, personal why. One shouldn't (and arguably couldn't) become a quality physician if money, power, social rank, or other superficial desires constitute their purpose. Passion for science and the medical field and a yearning to apply these ideas for the betterment of individuals and society are what I believe to be cornerstones of the medical community. Curiosity is something that everyone must possess. Floundering through an Organic Chemistry test is much more tolerable if the intrinsic desire of the individual is rooted in something substantial. Working 12 hour shifts for no pay can be viewed as an opportunity for growth rather than an unfortunate but necessary obstacle on the path to riches. If every second of medical school is plagued by a lack of purpose, then an indelible carelessness will infect what may have once been honest, genuine interest in the medical field. On the other hand, an understanding and appreciation for why one must endure these hardships will lead to gratification and a desire to use the sacred knowledge for something ulterior to selfish desires.

To wrap up this segment, I believe that what separates a devoted, fastidious, perhaps even joyful student from their morose, unpleasant counterpart is why they are braving the quotidian tasks and busy work that all students face. Certainly there are discrepancies in how individual students study and the amount of work they must do outside of class to earn quality grades, but a student who is incurably wistful and purposefully driven in their respective field will be far less perturbed by the inconveniences that afflict them.

ATHLETICS

All professional athletes possess magnificent athletic prowess, and much like the path of a physician, most athletes in a particular discipline achieved immense success by a fairly uniform, tangible how. The steps to becoming an NBA player, for example, differ only on the margin: where an individual grew up, if/where they attended college, which team throws money at them, etc. While the idiosyncratic purpose declared by each and every professional athlete is different, the why and the how are married to one another in a way. Put simply, the why is the fuel for the how, and the latter could not exist without the former.

Drawing on previous discussion, a sickly purpose is not enough to keep an individual running when the lactic acid build-up in their legs feels like freshly mixed concrete setting in their veins. It is not enough to get a worn-down college student out of bed at 5 A.M. and into the weight room to work the muscles that are already sore to the touch. Some of the most powerful motivators an athlete can have, according to Coach Brandon Masters, are "believing one can make it to the next level, and the pursuit of camaraderie and friendship within the team." These two in particular are very polar, but not mutually exclusive. While it's common to find them at opposing ends of the spectrum of raw talent, the gap between them is not difficult to bridge. Both are forward-looking, well-defined purposes, and are easily justified as why one would welcome torturous workouts, early mornings, and infringed free time.

It might come as a surprise, then, that many athletes I have personally encountered approach their sport with little to no conviction, lacking a basal desire to even be a functioning member of their team. How can someone with a lackluster answer to the question of "why?" and an entirely unmotivated attitude sustain the demands of athletics? They simply cannot. An athlete who is unsure why they are on the track in the first place will refrain from anything extraneous to the bare minimum, and is liable to skip workouts or perform them with limited effort and attention to detail. This bland simulacrum of an athlete will underperform, regardless of their athletic capabilities, and won't achieve success outside of their own mind. This lack of purpose is something I can guarantee you will not find in any professional athlete, the likes of which would be frankly repulsed.

Another interesting point made by Coach Masters concerns coaching athletes that lack a well-placed why. He concedes that, despite his best efforts, he has never been able to provide an athlete with a purpose and a reason to push their limits. "A coach's responsibility is to provide talented athletes with the means to succeed (drills, training, lifting programs, etc.)". In other words, a coach is an athlete's primary source of the how. But the coach cannot provide a why. The most any coach can do is to "create an environment that fosters the development of a well-placed why." This is why the cooperation and collective pursuit of a group purpose is crucial

In any sport at the collegiate level, the pursuit of a national title is the ultimate goal. Adjusting the vernacular to suit this post, it is the purpose of the team. The "team" is not a real, tangible, thing, but merely a construct to organize a group of athletes, which are real, tangible human beings. The team is nothing without the individuals that comprise it, and as such, the more individuals that buy in to the purpose of the team and the more willing to endure hardships they are, the greater the odds of success for the team. Not every individual will succeed and realize their full potential, but a group of purpose-driven, highly motivated athletes will outperform a disorganized, dispassionate group more often than not, even if the latter group has the upper hand in terms of strict athletic capabilities.

This paradigm that successful athletes adopt is not exclusive to athletes. I noted how all members of our worldwide community are relentlessly tried and prodded with issues ranging from minor inconveniences to cataclysmic events. The proprietorship of a distinct, unique purpose is required to forge through life's ceaseless difficulties. At their core, the struggles of an athlete can seem trivial compared to those faced by a single mother, a low-income family, or a recent widow, but the succor that a well-placed purpose can provide does not discriminate.

FAMILY

The last segment I want to talk about is coincidentally concerned with the spawn of each individual creature. The concept of biological parents, a mother and a father, is not unique to humans, mammals, vertebrates, or even animals. Even plants, at a very fundamental level, have a male and female parent. I don’t doubt we all know the details of how one becomes a mother, but much more enigmatic at times is why women choose to sacrifice so much to harbor a helpless child and rear it through adulthood.

We know that all organisms have a biological predisposition to mate and produce offspring, passing our genes on to the next generation. Unconscious of what is going on at the microscopic level, many adults derive an entirely unexplored dimension of purpose when they have children. Thankfully, I have avoided parenthood in the first 20 years of my life, but as I look around me I realize that I’m not too terribly far from this milestone. Why does creating a new generation and spawning a unique blend of genes give us so much pleasure? As a childless young man, I am completely unequipped to answer that question, so I turned to two reliable sources: my own mother and that of a close friend.

Asked simply, “why did you become a mother?”, my own mother was caught slightly off-guard but articulated how it was “her heart’s desire since she was a child.” This may seem like a stereotypical response, but she went on to explain how growing up in a deeply religious family created a desire for children in her. She comes from a very large family, and in her own words, “children were always welcome growing up and never treated as a burden.” This indoctrination in her youth led to her lovingly mothering five children, and embracing grandchildren as they come one by one.

My friend’s mother had a response that was slightly similar, but emphasized a few distinct points. She detailed how she wanted to be a part of “the endless link from mother to mother back to time eternal.” The (almost) never-ending genealogy of everyone’s ancestors is poetic at first, but the more the places it could have gone awry are contemplated, the more nauseating it can become. In essence, my friend’s mother explained her biological predisposition to reproduce, adding how her physical attraction to her husband assured their children would be adorable. She goes on to explain how she was wholly unprepared for the nascent worrying that was birthed along with each child, and how “the evil in the world is a daunting foe.”

The common denominator between these two responses was that their purpose throughout the child-rearing process was unperturbed. They felt a certain responsibility for their children, and their capacity for love blossomed as they accepted a new purpose, a new why. Barring a severe misinterpretation, I can comfortably say that neither one of them has ever doubted their reasoning for having children. On the contrary, many mothers seem to vicariously adopt the purpose of their offspring.

In conclusion, your individual purpose is the answer to the why of everyday life. In Spanish, "why?" is said as "¿por que?" which is literally translated to "for what?". The next time you find yourself in the face of some adversity, and I assure you it won't be long, ask yourself, "for what?". What are you enduring this for? A purpose with a solid foundation is not easily obtained, and as previously detailed, cannot be bestowed upon you. It is something that we spend our entire lives uncovering and piecing together, like excavating a deeply entrenched fossil. A great place to start though, is to ignore for a second how you're going to power on, and ponder if you even know why you want to.