Instead of your life's purpose \ stacker news ~mostly

3368 sats \ 25 comments \ @elvismercury 10 Jun mostly_harmless

This article was a good kind of suckerpunch.

An alternate approach is a non-linear approach. It is premised on the idea that life is full of randomness punctuated by sudden moments – crises and opportunities – with vast potential for meaning making, when our skills and virtues shine.

Rather than struggle to discover a purpose or vocation, we become people who can recognize and exploit opportunities to create meaning as they arise – resourceful and audacious people who live adventurous lives.

A contemporary struggle, for me, at this evaluation point in life where I have the freedom to move in various directions, and being pulled in many, and trying to find the thing that unites them all, that I can give myself to. And this is fucking impossible, you just grind and grind on it. What's the right answer?

The article is getting at the idea that maybe there isn't some true path, that makes sense of the others. Maybe what you can do is encounter each scene in a manner that you can contribute to it, whatever that means; and the aspirations is less to accomplish mission x and more become the person who can do something useful in this context.

Or at least, that's what I'm noodling on after reading this. I'm mostly thinking of what kind of person it is, who can make the most of the scenes with which the world presents me; and how I can turn into that kind of person.

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314 sats \ 2 replies \ @grayruby 10 Jun

I think it is truly rare that people find their "purpose" and pursue that one thing. Ultimately purpose is what you make it. My purpose now is to give all that I can to raising and teaching my kids so they can be prepared to build a life (and purpose if you will) for themselves and to help out my parents as they traverse the home stretch of their lives.

Maybe as my kids grow up and my parents pass on my purpose will change again, but for now I am where my feet are.

73 sats \ 1 reply \ @elvismercury OP 10 Jun

This seems like as noble a purpose as could be hoped for. Does it feel like enough? The bitch is that sometimes it doesn't.

131 sats \ 0 replies \ @grayruby 10 Jun

I intentionally crafted the lifestyle I have so it is most definitely enough for me.

252 sats \ 1 reply \ @Undisciplined 10 Jun

This resonates pretty strongly with me, too. It reminded me of the optionality post #512150 from a couple months ago.

I'm trying to be in a position where, if I "find the thing that unites them all, that I can give myself to", I can jump on it. Until then, it's a slow building out and accumulation of things that might help me do so, and move me in the direction I want to go, either way.

Gradually, then suddenly. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.

It also made me think about entropy. I think being able to tolerate larger amounts of entropy allows you to take more advantage of different situations and see the potential in them. Needing things to be a particular way limits your scope.

82 sats \ 0 replies \ @elvismercury OP 10 Jun

Needing things to be a particular way limits your scope.

That's a big truth. Limits your scope, and leaves you increasingly buffeted by the world.

328 sats \ 1 reply \ @cryotosensei 10 Jun

I feel like I might have insights to shed on this matter. First,

My teaching background Perhaps it would be best if I tell you about my background. I first taught General Paper - a subject that requires students to have strong argumentation skills - at a junior college to pre-tertiary students. Subsequently, I taught oral communication, report writing and critical thinking skills to polytechnic students. After that, I taught English as a Foreign Language to elementary and junior high school students under the Japan Exchange Teaching Programme. Japan opened my eyes to a lot of things, but reality beckoned, so I packed my bags and went home to teach Foundational English to teenagers at a vocational secondary school. During this period, an opportunity for me to teach English at an elementary school came up. I grabbed the bull by the horns and was attached to this elementary school for three years. Last but least, I returned to the vocational school after my attachment and now serve as a literacy coach for students who have dyslexia. Typically, people exclaim, “Woah” when I share my job history with them. I don’t necessarily think that my credentials are all that impressive because I hop from job to job like a bee that sips nectar from flower to flower, so I don’t accumulate expertise in terms of teaching at a particular level. Nonetheless, my limiting gap is also my strength since I have had the experience to teach English at different educational levels. I have been exposed to its intricacies, quirks and nuances from different perspectives!

So you can say that I took (and am still taking) a non-linear approach in regard to my career. If I had stayed on at my first iob, I could have climbed up the ladder and become a Head of Development by then. Instead, I strayed off the path and went to be an Assistant Language Teacher in Japan. It’s a step down!

In order to embrace the non-linear approach, I believe you got to be more self-aware than the average person, since you are deliberately taking the path less travelled. If you are not crystal clear about what you are doing, you could find yourself regretting your life choices, which is a recipe for disaster. So, I used to perform academically well in school, and I got to confess that it was a bitter pill to swallow when I chanced upon my ex-classmates a few years ago and learnt that they had taken up managerial positions in their fields. But I didn’t stay envious for long because I have always been aware of my top personal and professional value: FUN. To me, teaching students of different ages at different institutions was worth the trade off I made in terms of fortune n status. No regrets.

Personally, I’m really into the MBTI profiling. So, I’m ENFP, the quirky character who loves to embark on wacky adventures. The description fits me to a T, n helps fortify my resilience against FOMO.

I m gonna assume that you are in your late 20s n perhaps in the middle of a quarter-life crisis? Sorry if I come across as presumptuous. I faced a lot of existential angst in my 20s haha

13 sats \ 0 replies \ @elvismercury OP 10 Jun

In order to embrace the non-linear approach, I believe you got to be more self-aware than the average person, since you are deliberately taking the path less travelled.

This seems right. I wonder if this is why some of the most successful people (by my standard, and perhaps, based on what you've written, by yours) are also some of the most self-aware? Because the purpose that emerges will be a function of how well one knows oneself, so that they may follow that non-linear path?

To me, teaching students of different ages at different institutions was worth the trade off I made in terms of fortune n status. No regrets.

Getting an outcome that you've consciously chosen makes these kinds of bitter pills go down more easily. Far more than just the magnitude of the difference, not choosing anything, and not trying for anything, seems to leave people extra bitter and susceptible to the cancerous envy that comes with observing other people's success.

I faced a lot of existential angst in my 20s haha

Let's hope it's the necessary fertilizer for better things later.

118 sats \ 2 replies \ @plebpoet 10 Jun

I like this, resonates with me too! I think it takes flexibility and imagination to be that person. To myself, when I get a little too frustrated with life and I think I should have more or do more, I'll remind myself that I'm on the path, that every day is a new day to see some part of it revealed.

153 sats \ 1 reply \ @elvismercury OP 10 Jun

I'll remind myself that I'm on the path, that every day is a new day to see some part of it revealed.

They say the passive voice is to be avoided, but this is how I think of it, too, when I'm most successful: in terms of revelation. Not holding on so tightly. An easy log to fall off of, in my experience.

54 sats \ 0 replies \ @plebpoet 10 Jun

agreed, most eloquent elvis

111 sats \ 2 replies \ @k00b 10 Jun

This means not waiting to find your story arc, but rather recognizing that there are stories that pop up which you can opt into if you recognize them and have the right skills and virtues. It is about being prepared for the call to adventure, and cultivating the ability to recognize it, rather than believing we can direct our lives from the perspective of some knowable, ultimate mission.

This approach to the problem of meaning recognizes that, rather than trying to discern a mission, it is better to become a certain kind of person – a person who is capable of acting on and recognizing opportunities to make meaning when they are seen.

I see this as a superior guide to finding or defining purpose rather than a guide to a different kind of purpose. Most people host a caricature of purpose because the result of executing the author's advice looks like someone following a mission. I haven't thought clear enough to describe finding purpose this way, but I think this is the only way to describe it, as in: being the fullest version of you, making meaning and deploying virtue in your unique way, is the purpose.

Where my thinking might differ is I tend to think a mission emerges from this process if it's pursued long enough.

(I have a meeting, but I'll come back to say more after.)

23 sats \ 0 replies \ @elvismercury OP 10 Jun

(I have a meeting, but I'll come back to say more after.)

You and your meetings.

13 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b 10 Jun

Carrying on ...

I think a mission emerges from this process if it's pursued long enough. It's like a mission is just your later-stage life's purpose. You might never find a mission, but the author describes the best way to find it even if he implies mission and purpose don't always intersect. If one makes meaning and deploys virtue long enough, it will eventually lead them to powerful, undiscovered levers (in some N-dimensional meaning-virtue space) and their mission becomes pulling them.

I suspect this is true even if the person doesn't have a Thing, because not having a Thing is a Thing, and it leads them somewhere in meaning-virtue space, somewhere more exotic than where people with a Thing end up (the magnitude of their vector may be smaller, but it's dense where vectors of recognizable Things are sparse). Maybe it's harder to find big levers wherever non-Thing people end up, but I imagine, naively, in this hallucination I'm having, they'd have a talent in pulling a symphony of small levers where Thing-people are stuck yanking on a stubborn few.

I'm a Thing-person so I'll never compose a lever-pulling orchestra, but if I were a non-Thing person I suspect that'd be my mission, whatever that practically looks like, assuming I wanted a mission.

260 sats \ 1 reply \ @SilkyNinja 10 Jun

I thought this essay was generally very good. I liked it a lot; as someone who is rather tunnel-vision about my work, the idea that maximizing yourself for efficiency like a machine is perhaps beside the point of how we are actually made is a nice "cold water" sort of reminder:

Our creative powers do not flow smoothly and evenly like water from the tap to the drain, but chaotically like a babbling brook going from the mountains to the ocean – with different shoals, rapids, pools and speeds along the way.

Also really aligns with Henri Bergon's theories for the social purpose of laughter, which is funny; out of every philosopher who's had something to say about laughter, Bergson's work actually has the most profound impact on comedy as we know it today.

Basically, he argues that what's funny about the man who slips on a banana peel is that he's walking so much like a machine that he can't help but slip: We need to make fun of each other to avoid become machine-like because it's not conducive to (his/"the") ideal of society and human behavior.

If you do a little digging, you can appreciate his historical context makes him a little anti-machine and anti-technology, which is why I can get a little skeptical of point-blank accepting his theory - but the mind is at least not exactly a machine that all of us know completely how to operate, so it's salient to remind ourselves to reassess our operations every now and then.

To modify the face description of the linear and non-linear approaches to suit some of my perception of life: It's like looking at a yoga pose and trying to achieve the shape of the pose via cranking yourself rather than learning how to understand how the body moves in a genuine sense. Which is to say I don't think it actually works.

I think the overarching, singular sort of meaning he describes can be found in the mysteries which obsess you. I don't think that it's something you can rationalize and plan out and say "Ah, Eureka, I'm supposed to be a ______!"; I think it is inherently a highly intuitive, emotional and spiritual "breadcrumb trail" experience. Which is why the description of the nonlinear approach is compelling.

I think "why" we consider the idea of a linear approach viable is exacerbated by the telephone game of how stories evolve over time: the people who retell the stories can get preoccupied with how the hero saved other people, rather than who the hero needed to be in order to be a hero. It may reveal the possibility that we value the potentiality that a hero who will save us exists over the potentiality of us becoming the heroes ourselves - or that we value being seen as a hero over the work required to be a hero. Or -- that we are simply taught those values due to inadvertently sloppy second-hand storytelling :) (I tend to believe that it's this last option - we just get confused by poor second-hand storytelling)

I say "can" and "may" because I think there are a lot of very sober authors throughout all of time who emphasize describing virtuous action over the social effects of the perception of heroism. Not just Ayn Rand!

111 sats \ 0 replies \ @elvismercury OP 10 Jun

[T]he mind is at least not exactly a machine that all of us know completely how to operate, so it's salient to remind ourselves to reassess our operations every now and then.

To modify the face description of the linear and non-linear approaches to suit some of my perception of life: It's like looking at a yoga pose and trying to achieve the shape of the pose via cranking yourself rather than learning how to understand how the body moves in a genuine sense.

This intersects something I wrestle with a lot. There are two wolves:

Wolf A: you can only get in yoga poses that your body can actually accommodate -- pretending otherwise is the road to misery. If you can't bend yourself into the required shape after conscientious effort, it's wrong for you. Knock it off. Find your own thing.

Wolf B: stop being a fucking baby! Hard things are hard, and they are accomplished by striking the stone until it breaks. No stone of any consequence breaks after the first few strikes.

I believe in both these wolves. They have their own large territories. And yet they can't, for a particular thing, both be true. But it's hard to know which territory you're in. At least, it's hard for me.

(I know I've said something about this before, probably many times. But like I mentioned, I wrestle with it a lot.)

101 sats \ 1 reply \ @Taft 10 Jun

A contemporary struggle, for me, at this evaluation point in life where I have the freedom to move in various directions, and being pulled in many, and trying to find the thing that unites them all, that I can give myself to.

If you find "the thing that unites them all", please tell me. I'm searching for that thing, too.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @elvismercury OP 10 Jun

@remindme 6 months.

76 sats \ 1 reply \ @Coinsreporter 10 Jun

Who doesn't fall prey to what I call the optionality fallacy? The problem here isn't necessarily having the options part — it's the accumulating options that is problematic.

The problem is that we tend to assume that all our options and opportunities are built by keeping as many doors open for as long as possible.

24 sats \ 0 replies \ @elvismercury OP 10 Jun

Yeah, "keeping options open" is a poison I dosed myself with for a looooong time.

27 sats \ 0 replies \ @SatsMate 11 Jun

I know two people who both found their purpose. They LOVE what they do. They think about it all hours of the day, they love working on it - and will stop at nothing. In my view they both have already "made it", but for them, they keep grinding higher to even better heights. These two people I try to have as my role models, because it is a rare straight. It is pretty difficult to get ahold of them because they are both somewhat famous now.

27 sats \ 0 replies \ @riberet19 11 Jun

Great read, we are all on the path of finding ourselves, or what our purpose is in this world, but it is rare who find it.

27 sats \ 0 replies \ @tilolupili20 10 Jun

Very interesting

24 sats \ 0 replies \ @MiddleWay 10 Jun

What's the purpose of Conway's Game of Life? To watch patterns evolving. We are but cells in the real game of life. It will evolve more or less the same with or without each individual, so our goal is to hang on long enough to witness "one more turn".

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Athena 11 Jun

Life is a bumpy ride. You need optional ways to evade them...

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @IamSINGLE 11 Jun

Great Article! My understanding is that we must follow a purpose in life but to achieve it the options must be open and many. If there are not we should try to create...