Searching for Purpose? Try Living Gratefully

We humans cannot find peace of heart unless we find meaning in life. Meaning is that in which our heart finds rest. We never achieve meaning as one achieves a purpose by hard work. It is always received as pure gift. And yet we must give meaning to our lives.

Br. David Steindl-Rast

What do you want to do when you grow up? We burden children with this question, and then we burden each other as adults when we ask What do you do? 

These questions are about identity, opportunity, and choice, but they are often conflated with our “purpose.” Purpose is defined as “an aim or a goal,” but our understanding of purpose has evolved into the notion that we have one vocation and calling in life, and if we do not find it then our life will lack meaning. The illusion that purpose can be
“found” through ambition or hard work has created what many now call “purpose-anxiety.” 

Instead of pursuing purpose, living gratefully first invites us to discover meaning. From this discovery, our purpose emerges. 

Rather than strong-arming life to achieve a specific goal in order to obtain meaning, we can attune and listen to life — listen to our relationships, community, and all that is good in our lives, and all that for which we are grateful — to discover the meaning that is already present with or without a “purpose.” This way of being is how we awaken to what we might otherwise take for granted and come to appreciate all that is sacred in our brief existence. Our foundation for living purposefully begins, as Br. David Steindl-Rast says, “where our heart finds rest.” 

There is a lightness to meaning. It is not something to be pressured or wrangled, and there is no need to go out and create it as one might try to do if suffering from “purpose-anxiety.” Where purpose seeks to fulfill a goal, discovering meaning is a place where we encounter and observe what makes us come most alive. From this meaning-filled foundation, wherever and however your heart finds rest, you can respond to life. This response to what is meaningful is your purpose.

Like once meaningful rituals, traditions, and relationships you may outgrow in a lifetime, purpose also evolves and expands. From a place of belonging to yourself, from the place where your heart rests, you can ask: how is my life inviting me to respond to this gift of being alive? We will often find that the answer is not in materialistic pursuits, but in relational and contemplative ones. Soon we see that meaning and purpose are in communication with each other, not autonomous endeavors. 

We are also quick to learn that a meaningful and purposeful life is not found by comparing our lives to others, which is a great temptation in this age of social media.  Mary Oliver offered the provocative line, “What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” It is often read as an invitation to live boldly, but the poet Maggie Milner offers a different interpretation. Oliver was shunned as an “unserious” writer by her contemporaries. In the poetry world, she was often looked down on while the public ate her up. In her poem, she says, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” This line is a clapback. In other words, she says, stop comparing yourself to me. Go figure out how to live your life. Through simplicity and observation, Oliver was captivated by her life and found meaning in it within ordinary objects and vistas. Her purpose seems to be to share what she saw. Imagine if she had listened to her peers rather than listened to her life. 

Pursuing a purpose rooted in ambitious goals may make us successful, but it likely won’t make our lives more meaningful. Living a grateful life helps us discover the meaning that already exists and the meaning that will continue to reveal itself throughout our lifetime if we are paying attention to it. This is a practice that allows us to recognize our purpose from a place where our heart is at rest, where we are lighter and continuously experiencing an inner wholeness. For me, that is the work, that is the purpose, of us humans.

Feature image by Ashley Batz

Joe Primo, Grateful Living

Joe Primo is the CEO of Grateful Living. He is a passionate speaker and community-builder whose accomplishments made him a leading voice on resilience and adversity. Gratefulness for life, he believes, is foundational to discovering meaning and the only response that is big enough and appropriate for the plot twists, delights, surprises, and devastation we encounter along the way. A student of our founder since his studies at Yale Divinity School, Joe is committed to advancing our global movement and making the transformational practice of grateful living both accessible to all and integral to communities and places of belonging. His TED talk, “Grief is Good,” reframed the grief paradigm as a responsive resource. He is the author of “What Do We Tell the Children? Talking to Kids About Death and Dying” and numerous articles.

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