Find Your Purpose

Tonight I completed the last assignment and posts for my last class, and other than waiting for grades, I am now finished with my collegiate career. The road was long and hard, but nothing I experienced can ever compare to the journeys of some of my classmates that include military personnel, single mothers and people looking to better their lives. As I sit here in the aftermath of pushing the send button, there is both a reflective pause and a nervous discernment for what’s next. While I should feel excited, there is this feeling that there are no more excuses for not achieving more in life.

Grand Canyon University’s tagline is “Find Your Purpose”. In that statement, students are inspired to discover their passion and commitment in order to bring life fulfillment. As I reflect on my life and all the trials and tribulations that come with it, I believe I found mine. However, I also understand that it’s not easy for people at any age to discover their purpose. With that, I went back and found this message I wrote in one of my first two classes when my instructor asked me to write a message of encouragement to those in their twenties just beginning the journey to finding purpose. This is what I wrote:

Purpose in life is all about the passage. While most of us seek the end result, objectives or goals, we often forget that the journey is just as important as the destination. It’s the dreams and defeats, the good times and bad, the love and the indifference, and the joy and the pain that mold our personalities and our cultural beliefs as well as our understandings of who we are deep inside. One cannot see reality looking through the perfect lens or the crystal mirror. Rather, sometimes we see our true selves looking through the shards of broken glass because, in the distortion, we cannot maintain the halo of who we think we are in our heads. It is then that we see the truth in who we are at the core, and our desire for who we want to be.

Purpose is the self-realization that in our imperfect state of being, we know what brings out the best in ourselves. In doing so we bring out the best in others. When we can do that, then we know we are living out our purpose in life.