Patchwork Purpose
Maybe my life’s calling has more pieces than I thought.
In one of Tara Brach’s recent guided meditations on YouTube, she said there are two wings of compassionate inner awareness: seeing what’s going on and opening your heart to it.
Those words got me thinking. About the way I treat myself and how I might allow myself a kinder and more expansive framework as I explore a new path of purpose in my life.
Noticing My Patterns
In my healing process over the last few years, I’ve gotten really good at that first part of awareness. These days I can see things coming a mile away and recognize my triggers almost immediately when they rise up inside me.
When I start to feel anxious or troubled, I can usually say to myself:
Oh yeah, that’s my lifelong instinct to swoop in and try to save someone I care about who is hurting.
or
Yep, this is my classic tendency to tie my value to my productivity.
or
This is me having zero tolerance for ever making a mistake.
or
There you are, people pleasing. Trying to make me think I can control what someone else thinks about me. Even though I know it’s completely futile and leads to nothing but my own suffering.
(The list goes on and on.)
I notice my old patterns, and that is huge progress. Instead of living in oblivion of exactly why I feel terrible, I can recognize when some situation from the past is projecting itself onto the present or when old voices of fear and rejection are trying to drown out the truth of what’s really happening.
I can see my patterns, and sometimes I can even change or redirect them in the moment.
But do I open my heart to them?? Hmmmmm. That seems like a bigger challenge.
Opening My Heart to Myself
To be truthful, I often roll my eyes at my conditioning and patterns. Or I get impatient with them and just think, “Dude, leave me alone, will you? Haven’t I dealt with you enough?”
But sometimes, in my better moments, I say to those old habitual thoughts:
I see you. I get why you’re here. You’re not logical, and I’m certainly not going to let you take over my brain, but I understand why you showed up. I know in some weird way you’re trying to help me. Because you represent a part of me that is real, a part that didn’t get what it needed at some other point in my life - probably love and acknowledgement and acceptance. So let me try to give you a little of that now.
In the meditation, Tara Brach asked us to focus on a situation or emotion that was troubling us, so we could practice bringing compassionate attention to it.
I chose to focus on my self-recrimination about not having a “purpose” in life right now, since my career path has been stalled for several years, and I’m constantly questioning my self-worth and where I’m going with my life.
I let myself feel that self-recrimination in my body and realized that it’s really fear, like most of my unsettling emotions turn out to be.
I asked myself: What am I afraid of?
The answer came quickly: I’m afraid of wasting my life. Of getting to the end of my years and feeling that I never accomplished anything meaningful or important.
One option here would be to start analyzing: Well, how do you define meaningful and important, Devan?
And that kind of cognitive analysis is a valid path.
But before doing that, I stopped and first opened my heart to my feelings of fear. I crossed my arms over my chest, gave myself a hug, and said to myself:
Wow, that is such a scary feeling. The fear of not being useful or important is real and so valid. There’s so much programming we all have about what value looks like. It’s frightening to think you’re not living up to that. I love you, Devan, I’m sorry you feel this way. Let me hold you in that for a while.
As I held myself in that feeling (trippy, I know, but stick with me here) two thoughts came to my mind in quick succession:
You are always, always valuable, Devan.
(This is a sentiment I often express to my YouTube viewers, but am not always generous enough to give to myself).
The second was more surprising:
Your purpose is broader than you think.
I held onto that one and didn’t analyze it too much in the moment. I just kept being present with my feelings and allowed a little peace and acceptance to seep into my body.
But I wrote it in my journal and when I went back to it later, insights continued to surface.
How I Define Purpose
Your purpose is broader than you think.
To me, the idea of purpose has always felt like it needed to be huge and all-consuming. A deep calling that guides your life and absorbs your attention and energy.
When I think of purpose, I think of teachers, parents, artists. People who advocate for children, who make change in their communities, who protect those who can’t protect themselves. I think of authors, coaches, inventors, spiritual leaders. Scientists, business owners, activists, innovators.
I can fit most of the people I love and respect into one of these categories. Back when I was building my career working for nonprofits, I saw myself in there too.
The organization where I worked for ten years provided educational programs and support to children who are deaf or hard of hearing and their families. My jobs before and after were always focused on learning, on bringing information and access to people who needed it.
Even though that career path eventually led to burnout, and I knew I had to leave it to take care of myself, it was hard to let go of the reassurance that I was doing something meaningful with my life.
Now, five years later, on the other side of my husband’s mental health crisis and a lot of internal personal healing that doesn’t show up as conventional success, it often feels like everyone in my life and everyone I admire has a purpose.
And I’m just flailing around doing stuff.
This is what I wrote in my journal:
What is my divine calling? It doesn’t have to be big and glamorous. does it? I just want it to feel good and right. Maybe it’s a whole bunch of little things put together. Being a loving auntie, creating ASMR, writing, being a dog foster, gardening, cooking, making art, practicing embodiment, being a kind friend. My tendency is to think I’m not doing any of those things enough to have it count.
But that’s just another old habitual way of thinking, a framework of lack and unworthiness, thinking it has to be dramatic and all-consuming and exhausting in order to be meaningful.
I am touching the world all the time just by being me, by expressing my energy and that is enough. That is truly a comfort when I can let myself believe it.
A New Definition
In the midst of all this exploration, something came back to me that I heard coach and writer Holiday Phillips say years ago. She advised that we stop searching for our purpose and instead bring purpose to everything we do.
Maybe there’s some special quality I bring to the things I do, to all these various bits and pieces of my life, that threads them all together. My unique perspectives, the presence and energy I bring to my creations and interactions.
Maybe it’s simply the way I am that is my purpose.
Even though I was really starting to annoy my ego and my pain body with this line of thinking, since they want me to BE SOMETHING BIG and feel terrible if I’m not (and the truth is, they also want me to feel terrible even if I am), I felt like I was onto something.
Then, as so often happens when we allow ourselves this kind of introspection, one more little nugget found its way to me that opened my heart even wider to what my own purpose might look like.
Not surprisingly, it was a library book.
Thoughts from A Kindred Spirit
I’m currently reading Anne of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery. I loved the whole Anne series when I was a girl, and I’ve re-read Anne of Green Gables multiple times (even did a read- aloud recording of the full novel on my YouTube channel), but hadn’t explored the rest of the series as an adult until now.
I’ve always related to Anne and the duality of her personality. Her balance between being a dreamer and an achiever, wanting to do right in the world, while also accepting and having patience with the challenges and idiosyncrasies of her personal character. As Anne herself would say, I’ve always found her a kindred spirit.
Yesterday, I read the following exchange1 between Anne Shirley and Gilbert Blythe, in which they are discussing the purpose and ambitions of their lives. Gilbert has just shared his goal of helping the world by becoming a doctor, and this is how Anne replies:
“I’d like to add some beauty to life,” said Anne dreamily. “I’d love to make people have a pleasanter time because of me. To have some little joy or happy thought that would never have existed if I hadn’t been born.”
“I think you’re fulfilling that ambition every day,” said Gilbert admiringly.
This scene brought tender tears to my eyes, and made me think:
Maybe that’s what I’m doing too, Anne. And maybe that’s enough.
Thanks for reading. You can watch my ASMR/Relaxation videos on YouTube at Quiet Comfort ASMR and read my (occasional) poetry at Love Poems Life Poems here on Substack.
Anne of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery. Chapter VII. Copyright 1909 by L.C. Page & Company, Inc.