[This is the story of the start-up and app Purposely™. Each week I’ll chat about its purpose, progress, and possibilities. Let’s consider this the memoir of an app <smile>. If you’d like to be in touch, please drop me a line to [email protected]. And please take a peek at my latest book, Choose Your Life Purposes, which spells out the principles upon which Purposely is built.]
I grew up reading Kafka, Orwell, and writers in the existential, analytical, and postmodern traditions. Each, in his or her own way, announced the following news: how absurd to believe that we matter!
We are only excited matter, they explained, coursing through the universe for a second, bumping into black holes and dark matter, our strings vibrating because the universe is a great tuning fork and we are a bit of an hors d’oeuvre at the end of that tuning fork.
We all got that message, loud and clear, deep in our bones.
And so, in the context of Purposely, isn’t it absurd to be creating an app as civilization winds down? Isn’t that a completely absurd idea, to invite people to choose and commit to their life purposes as temperatures hit 120° and globalism dwarfs the individual?
Yes, it is quite absurd. But the only remedy to that patent absurdity is to smile the ironic smile that every postmodern person knows how to smile and to get on with the task of living, precisely as if we mattered. As long as we are around on this mortal coil, kicking and breathing, we must relegate absurdity to some basement corner, where we keep the lights out.
Purposely’s simple message is, while you’re alive, you must act as if you matter. Yes, fires may be burning, wars may be escalating, and the Doomsday clock may have struck the hour. But you and I still have our duties, our joys, and our responsibilities. Take that, absurdity!
There you may currently sit, working remotely, alone with your thoughts, deciding whether or not to have some potato chips, behind on the rent, guilty about not talking to your parents for a month, and all the rest, and here we are absurdly inviting you to name your life purposes, as if anything in your life could really be called a life purpose. Life purposes! But, yes, absurdly enough, we are asking you to do exactly that.
We are inviting—demanding—that you shout, “Yes, this IS important to me” and “Yes, that IS important to me,” and to believe or to make believe that the things you are calling important actually are important to you or can be treated as if they are important to you. Is that an illusion? Is that a delusion? Doesn’t matter! That’s the existential ideal, isn’t it, to stand tall in our exact predicament?
But wait. Maybe it’s something different from an illusion or a delusion. Not falling down drunk in the gutter isn’t absurd, is it? That, surely, is a good thing, isn’t it? Finding some peace in your own mind, some calm, some rest—surely that isn’t absurd, is it? Working at something that feels meaningful to you rather than at something that feels horrible, that surely isn’t absurd, is it? Those are just good things, aren’t they, untouchable by irony?
I do not see a hint of irony or absurdity in such everyday aspirations. Do you? Isn’t it true that it is not absurd to want to feel better rather than worse? To want to love rather than to not love? To want to be of help rather than to turn your back? These homilies do not change the orbits of the planets or keep fascists off our backs. But, in human terms, they are our human terms. Aren’t they?
Be easy, then, with the truth that, for all of our efforts and against our wishes, the world does not revolve around us and death is coming. And still, despite all that, we have our ways of keeping our individual globe spinning, for our own good reasons, according to our own hard-won principles. Purposely can help with that. Smile that ironic smile, if you must, but smile it while getting on with your life.
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[Purposely is slated to appear November, 2024.]
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If you liked From Strength to Strength, How to Ikigai, or Creating a Life That Matters, you’ll love Choose Your Life Purposes.
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock
