The Stronger Engine

As you can imagine, prison provides a unique situation where all of the aspects of your life that you love are stripped away from you and simultaneously… all of the daily stressors and anxieties of life are also suddenly taken out of your world. Due to this depletion of all things “normal”… you are left with two unavoidable truths. First, there is an underlying sadness that is ever present (whether you actively feel it or not) due to the hole in your heart that only being physically available for your loved ones can fill. Second, you are left with a decision to make regarding what you want to accomplish with the time you have, absent the stress and anxiety of living in the real world. This second truth is what I have been focusing on lately. Specifically, taking inventory of my goals but even more granular… deciphering whether these goals are personal desires or a step toward real purpose in my life beyond these walls.

In working and thinking through this notion of what I want versus what I believe my purpose is or could be… I started trying to understand the power of having an actual purpose in life as opposed to simply bouncing from one desire to the next. I think purpose and desire can seem similar, but they are extremely different, sometimes even opposing. Desire is personal, narrow, pointed and tends to be towards self preservation, self-gratitude, and short term gains and pleasures. Purpose, on the other hand, is wider, broader, a longer-term vision encompassing the benefit of others… something outside of ourselves that we are willing to fight for. I think in my past, I had been solely acting from a place of desire but I’d convinced myself that it was purpose.

Desire is what you want… purpose is the blossoming of what (and who) you actually are. Desire tends to weaken over time, whereas purpose strengthens the more you lean into it. Desire can be depleting because it’s insatiable. Purpose is empowering… it’s a stronger engine. Purpose has a way of contextualizing life’s unavoidable sufferings and making them have meaning and become worthwhile. I remember understanding this for the first time while I was reading Viktor Frankl’s book, “A Man’s Search for Meaning”. I looked back through the book and found a line that I underlined while reading it. Frankl wrote, “In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of sacrifice.” This rings so true to me. A noble aim engenders positive feelings. When we pursue what we believe to be a profound and valuable goal, it stirs the best parts of ourselves as well as the ones around us.

I cannot clearly state what my purpose is or will be but I feel so much clarity starting to be able to differentiate between my desires versus my purpose. As with most things in life, this search and discovery is (and will be) a work in progress and maybe… it always will be. If that ends up being the case… I’m cool with it because as I am learning… it’s all about the journey… not the destination.