How finding your purpose is a quest, not a one time ask
and how the journey is more of a goal than a path to skip
I always thought, finding one's purpose is like asking some questions and doing some research and then: plop, there is the answer.
But, damn, have I been wrong.
Why Purpose is an Experimentation
Purpose does not just come, it is not a question to ask but an experimentation to do. It is also not fixed, but evolving.
Every day, and every hour.
The amount of Personality Tests I did and the amount of questions I asked myself is astoundingly large:
16 Personalities, DISC, Career Tests, Value Tests, HIGH5 Strength Test, and the list goes on and on
So many tests and so many answers.
And with each answer, my reaction was: ah, I don't know. Is that really me? Do I really can put myself in a box like that? What if I am all of that within?
And the search began anew.
And the answers were never satisfying: this beautiful painful tension of wanting to find answers but once answers revealed themselves, the answers were n't good enough.
But what if the answers were good, but the question was wrong?
The right answers to the wrong question
What if the question was simply wrong?
What if it was not about the looking for answers in books and quizzes and guard-railed frames?
What if it was through experimentation, through trial and error, that there was the answer to that question.
And what if - one step further - the question itself was the wrong question altogether? And it wasn't even about looking for answers somewhere else, but to look for something else?
Looking for Something Else
What if it is not only the experimentation that drives that question, but the question itself is the wrong question to ask?
What if it is more about curiosity? About creativity? About following ones excitement and wonder? Awe and fascination?
What if there is more to be found - more uniquely wonderful, creative and uniquely odd that makes for a life and purpose well lived.
Not because it is big, grande, structured and aligned, but simply because it is what guides life intuitively in its direction and path without asking any questions at all.
What if it is all intuition?
And what if it is the natural pathway that drives us to a topic, a person and a place. Not because we deliberately try to figure out, but simply, because we are drawn to it? We are fascinated by it and we are excited about it.
Just yesterday, I asked myself, why I am fascinated by AI.
And I didn't had an answer. I had many, but these many were so complex in themselves, that again they couldn't explain.
In the end, I simply accepted that it has a fascination to it. And that fascination drives me. even when I am unable to explain why.