Clarity is the Antidote to an Aimless Life.
More clarity = more freedom.
Do you want to live an aimless life? No, seriously. If the answer is no, you must ask yourself an even more challenging question: Are you living like it? I’m afraid if most of us were honest with ourselves, we may realize we are living pretty aimlessly, wandering towards whatever looks shiny and avoiding whatever looks difficult or painful, with not much thought for the trajectory of our life as a whole.
A couple weeks ago at church, my pastor rolled a whiteboard out on stage and drew a dot on one side. Narrating the way many of us live, he drew short lines going in many directions: we pursue one thing for a little while, and then we get bored and chase something else, and then we get burnt out and just hang out in the same place for awhile, and then we see something else interesting and run after that, and finally end up having ran all kinds of miles but in so many directions we end up not far from where we started. Similar to multitasking too much at work, we may feel like we’re busy all the time but we come to the end of the day (or the year) and realize we’ve actually not accomplished much of anything.
Now, I don’t think this is really a new concept for most of us: we’re usually pretty aware of these things. The challenge is found in what to do once we recognize our propensity to random spurts of wandering. If you’re anything like me, you worry that if you pick one direction then you’ll feel restricted. You know where I think some of this fear comes from? We’ve confused our purpose with a task or a vocation. As soon as you hear the question “what’s your purpose?” what do you think of? Is it a specific thing you do, like your job or type of volunteer work? In order to find clarity of purpose, we need to dig deeper into what purpose means.
As a person of faith, I look to the life of Jesus for a model of how to live, and something I think Christians often overlook is how Jesus did a variety of things throughout his time on earth, and all of them were part of his purpose. He was a carpenter for his “day job,” he preached to crowds, he hung out with his friends, he went fishing, he washed feet, he went out of his way to speak with societal outcasts and political leaders alike, and ultimately laid down his life for you and me… and you know what he was doing in every single one of those activities? Living out his purpose as God’s fullness in human form. His purpose wasn’t just to preach, it wasn’t just to build things out of wood, it wasn’t even just to sacrifice his life for us. His purpose was to live out glorify the Lord by living out love and truth in all of the things that he did. Friends, whether a Jesus follower or not, I think we can learn something from this. Our purpose is not a specific way of spending our time, but instead, how we behave in whatever it is we choose to do with our time. Whether he was making a table, sitting with a woman searching for truth, or healing a blind man, Jesus was living out his purpose in the way that was fitting for whatever task was before him. We can do the same.
So, I ask you again: what is your purpose? Maybe you feel drawn to bring joy to the world around you, whether it’s smiling at a stranger as you walk down the sidewalk or working for an entertainment company or writing handwritten notes to people in your life. Perhaps you’re called to innovate, whether it’s starting a business or helping your family break old patterns. You see how this type of purpose is both more clear and more freeing than limiting our purpose to a task or an activity? In my life, I struggle to know how hobbies like lifting or cooking or playing bass can be part of my larger purpose. But, when I think about purpose this way, I see that they can be: if my purpose is to show love to people, I can do that by encouraging other people at the gym, preparing a delicious meal for my family, or playing a song with my church’s worship team that shares truth about the love of God. When we think of our purpose as how we do life rather than what we do in our life, we both provide ourselves clarity for every type of scenario we find ourselves in while also leaving the door open for a career change down the road without having a purpose-change, too.
Okay, so you’ve got an idea of your purpose—or at least some guidance for what you’re even looking for as you find it—and now, how does this help you avoid wandering through life? Your purpose serves as the lens through which you make every decision on how to spend your time, your energy, and your money. Now, instead of being the scrambled lines my pastor drew on the whiteboard, your life looks like a long line, albeit with a few inevitable shifts. Instead of making small bits of progress here and there in various directions, you can make some pretty significant ground in the direction of your purpose. You’re not being pulled in a million different directions, so you can focus on the direction that matters most to you.
We’re still early in the year, and it’s not too late to set a direction for the months to come. Maybe your direction is just to find your direction; that’s okay! Take some time to reflect on your strengths and interests and see what you discover matters most to you. Maybe you already know what your purpose is, but you’ve never made it the priority. Let this year be the year where you relentlessly say no to everything that’s out of line with your purpose so you can enthusiastically say yes to those things that build momentum in the direction you want to go.
Journal Prompt of the Week
Have you been wandering a bit in your life recently? What is one thing you can start to prioritize as a clear direction, even if it’s a small thing?
Before you go:
I’ve read a number of books that center around this idea of choosing where to spend our time wisely and aimed in a meaningful direction. Here are links to those that have had the most influence on my life: