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Years ago my dear friend and spiritual guide of sorts Victor asked, “Jon, what do you want to do with your life?” At the time I really couldn’t answer Victor’s question. Maybe it was teaching Aikido? Maybe it was making a difference in some way? Today I still don’t have a good answer.
Yet, Victor got me to look within. What is my purpose? What do I want to be in my life? When Victor asked that he said it wasn’t about making a lot of money, marrying the pretty woman or having the perfect job. He really asked what would give me life and give me my life. He asked me this several years ago, about a couple of years before he passed away.
Perhaps like wisdom, I won’t discover purpose until I’m open to mine. I think purpose finds a man, not the other way round.
I traded email with my best friend John from high zchool, who lives in Tokyo. John’s son Sean goes to college in a couple years. Sean doesn’t like math. So John thinks that maybe a liberal arts college might be best. I told John that Sean is wiser than us at his age, because he already knows what “he doesn’t like doing”. Indeed, Sean is way ahead of the game. And he has a lot of time for his purpose to discover him.
So what’s my purpose, my calling? I wish to make a difference in the world on some scale. I don’t necessarily want or need to be remembered. Anyway, that’s for others to decide after I’m completed.
Maybe my desire to help others sources from my childhood, the fear and powerlessness I experienced growing up at home. I often recall the words of Lady Macbeth, “What’s done cannot be undone.” I can let the past be the past. Werner Erhard said, “Anything you can let be, lets you be.”
So is my wanting to make difference for others an “in order to” to make up for not being enough as a child? Perhaps. Does it make my cause less purposeful? I kind of doubt it.
In Immanuel Kant’s “Categorical Imperative”: The rightness or wrongness of our actions doesn’t depend upon their consequence, but rather upon whether they fulfill our duty. Perhaps, Kant says that our duty or purpose aligns with our actions. What we do and who we are being define more so than merely our speaking alone.
Werner Erhard said in that moment you discover you get to choose who you are going to be, you get that everything else is just collateral bullshit. Well, that’s more me saying. Werner iterates in that moment of transformational awakening, the authentic expression of who I am is in making a profound difference in some way.
I’ve discovered along the less traveled path like my towering “twin” martial arts brother Dolph Lundgren that making a difference begins with learning to love me, and healing me. There shall always be unkindness in the world, yet we must forgive others and forgive ourselves. Only when I heal and forgive me, can I truly make a difference for others.
Dolph said, “You have to love yourself.” Higher wisdom. Having compassion in this sometimes unkind world makes it work regardless of opinion. Compassion is my purpose, what Victor had asked about years ago.
So I practice compassion for others and for me. I do my best to get who other people are and leave them with the experience that they are indeed gotten, that they matter as human beings.
I’ve been honored with many rich invaluable relationships throughout my life. My purpose is to express that love back to others as well. Perhaps, the greater purpose of my life is having love in my heart. I believe I got that from Mom, too.
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This post was originally published on the author’s Facebook timeline and is republished here with his permission.
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Photo credit: Pixabay