What is My Purpose in Life?
When I was in high school, I was in Florida for a national speech and debate tournament. The day before, I was sitting outside the hotel and I was reading an article about an ongoing conflict in the Middle East. In the article, there were firsthand accounts from soldiers fighting on the front lines, and there was a Kurdish soldier’s story that stuck out to me. He said that he had wished that he had a family and something else to draw him away from fighting. It reminded him of a line from a poem by Nizar Qabbani:
“Love me.. away from the hands of oppression and repression, away from our city which has had its fill of death.”
Nizar Qabbani
This line came to the soldier during war, but I think it goes deeper than just that. I think this begins to answer the question of what is our purpose in life. Our lives travel pretty fast. The average American will probably only live until their mid 70’s and so for someone like me who’s in their early to mid 20’s, then my life is a third of the way over. Yikes. This can be a fact that is disheartening to people, but I find it rather empowering! We only have a limited amount of time here on this planet, so what should we do with it?
The answer, simply, is love.
It’s a love that isn’t just the type we see in Hallmark movies or in romantic novels, but rather a love that requires of us a sacrifice. Some of the most loving things people have done for me are things that were probably an inconvenience for them at the time! Love draws us out of ourselves, and it naturally makes us less selfish because we should be constantly sacrificing when we love! When we love in this way, we are able to change people’s lives and make the world a better place.
I think just about everyone wants to change the world. I think as humans one of our deepest fears is that of being forgotten about, and so we want to make an impact in the world so that that doesn’t happen. I also think this is something a lot of people say when they are asked about their life’s purpose. The beauty of doing this by loving others and by sacrificing for others is that it not only creates a positive impact in the world, but it ensures you will not be forgotten. People often forget facts, achievements, tasks, or items. Love cannot be forgotten in this same way because it inspires us, and moves us more deeply than any of those other things.
So, the answer is love. Your purpose in life is to love, and love well, so that others may do the same in their own lives. Love can be that thing that takes us “away from the hands of oppression and repression,” and into a world that doesn’t have these things.
