Tag: purpose

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Information overload.

The idea of a person searching for their soul mate is a relatively new idea.  Sixty years ago, people married because it was the social norm.  When looking for a partner, people often approached it from a social and economic perspective.  Will this person be able to give me children to work my farm? Will they be able to be the breadwinner and support a family?

People didn’t necessarily need to fall madly in love and have a laundry list of things they needed checked off  in order to find a suitable partner.  Many people started off with a partner they felt lukewarm about and worked hard to cultivate love in their marriage.  It wasn’t totally shocking to see a couple married for 30-40 years like it is today.

Now everyone wants a storybook romance that would sell out every movie theater in the country.  We have impossibly high standards that few of us could ever live up to.  We don’t necessarily want to be perfect ourselves, but we certainly want the people we date to be.

I’m part of this problem.  I’m one of the assholes out their in the world straight fucking up how people view relationships for generations to come.  The thought of settling for anything less than perfect person seems intolerable.

Thinking about the concept of finding a soul mate and the “perfect person” made me curious.   Did people always look for this deep-level of fulfillment, meaning and purpose in other aspects of their lives?  What about in their careers?   Is the idea of “do what you love and you will find your purpose in life” a new thing?

Where did all this searching for purpose in life come from?  Is it something brought about by motivational speakers and bad movies?  Do we search for deeper meaning because it’s what society tells us has value?  Or is it something that transcends time and is worth spending our life trying to figure out?

We’re flooded with ideas of how life it supposed to be and when we compare that to our reality, we become dissatisfied and feel less than.  We have access to so much knowledge, and even more so, the opinion of others who we think know what the fuck they’re talking about, that we get confused and aren’t sure how to process it all.

We’ve become lost in emotions and fluffy bullshit, so we create stories to make life match up with our fantasies.  We want the fairy tale and the Ferrari to match.  We don’t want to work 60 hours a week, make 50 grand a year and take our kids to eat at fucking Applebee’s. (more…)

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Purpose and Progress

Last night I made the decision that my life had fallen off track the last couple of weeks.  Ever since my vacation to California I had become unproductive and had lost focus of my goals.  My life had become all about play and very little about work.  I decided this was no longer acceptable and I needed to correct my behavior in order to restore some balance to my life.

Last night I set my alarm earlier than normal so I could get a head start on a productive day.  As the alarm on my phone blared its annoying cry this morning at 6:30 I tried to figure out why I was getting up early.

I could think of 100 reasons why I wanted to hit snooze and stay in bed.  I had fallen asleep late.  I woke up several times during the night.  My allergies were killing me.  My dog was being adorable the way she way laying with me.  But I literally couldn’t think of one reason as to why I should get up and start my day.

The outcome was obvious; I hit snooze.  Over and over.  After the fourth time I hit snooze I finally woke up, measured my dick, hit my knees, said my morning prayer then went to the kitchen to make myself a protein shake and eat 2 tablespoons of coconut oil.

article-2268950-1730381E000005DC-879_634x654The sad reality of what got me out of bed this morning is that I had an erection I wanted to measure.  Lately I’ve been feeling like my penis hasn’t been working correctly.  This has been a struggle for me ever since I got off steroids almost two years ago because I now have low testosterone levels.  In my mind it looks and feels much smaller than I remember.  This summer it felt and worked fine but I had a mental blow to my ego/penis that made me second guess the whole situation.

The only motivating factor that could drive me out of bed this morning was my fear and insecurity.  I had a good, full erection that felt right for once and I wanted to get out of bed quickly to measure it before It went flaccid.  Once I measured it I felt a little better and started my day.

On days like this it’s clear to me I struggle with my vision and purpose.  When my thoughts about staying in bed asleep far outweigh my ability to wake up and start my day, I know there is a huge disconnect.  I can make 1000 excuses as to why I couldn’t wake up and start my day early.  But the reality is I didn’t have a strong sense of purpose for my day.

I had my list of goals I want to accomplish today written down.  I made sure to look it over last night before bed as a reminder of the productive day I needed to have today.  But when my alarm went off I couldn’t think of anything on that list.  The comfort of laying in bed was overwhelming.  I came very close to cashing in my day before it even started.

These days become all too common in our lives.  We only get up out of a sense of fear that if we don’t we will experience negative repercussions in our lives.  We may miss our bus,  get fired from our job for not being on time or get up out of fear that our penis shrank.  But how long can those negative factors be the driving force in our lives and allow us to have a meaningful and successful existence.

For me, fear only drives me enough to do the bare minimum to get the job done.  There’s usually not a lot of satisfaction in things I do out of fear.  Facing my fears and doing things because they scare me, not because I am scared of what happens when I don’t do them, is something altogether different.  For me that’s where purpose comes in.  Part of what makes me feel alive is doing new activities that I am afraid of or being put in situations that take me out of my comfort zone.

My purpose may change daily.  But without purpose my days just exist.  They tend to lack meaning and rarely lead to any progress.  They become the rat race, drowning in the tedium of everyday life.

My purpose doesn’t need to be some grandiose goal every day.  But it needs to have meaning and serve my life in a manner that allows me to create progress.  When I am able to create progress my life becomes a journey.  Turning life into a game by challenging myself through daily experiments to see what I can accomplish so that life can have more meaning than just getting out of bed to measure my boner.