Life's Purpose? My Clients Hated My Answer

I still stand by it.

“Whether you like it or not, you are given life’s gifts. You do not deserve them. You cannot earn them. You simply receive them.

Deal with it.”

I said this recently in a session of The Bravely Examined Life—my year-long philosophical coaching program designed to help you reflect deeply on who you are and who you want to become—during a discussion about life’s purpose.

We were asking the big questions: Why are we here? How do we find our purpose?

As I looked at the expectant faces of the high-achieving women in the group, I offered a perspective that I knew would be unpopular:

As existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre’s said, human beings aren’t born with a pre-determined purpose or essence. Instead, we just are born. It’s up to us to decide why we’re here.

And because we live under capitalism, we’ve come to tell the story that the way we earn money or “contribute to society” is tied to our purpose and determines our value as human beings.

But that’s just a story.

The Bravely Examined Life members did not like this answer. What do you mean, I just exist? they said. That doesn’t feel like enough. I still need to pay my bills!

Yes, I said, we’ve organized a society that requires money to pay for food, shelter, and other things needed to live. But this was not always so, and it is not the only way.

For the hundred and fifty thousand years before agriculture, humans were simply born and given gifts from the natural world: wild strawberries, mountain streams, roots, nuts, the occasional hunted animal, and fresh air that literally just flows out of the living green.

These life-supporting gifts were not earned, but simply given.

And they were met with gratitude and care.

So, yes, we now live under capitalism, and we have to survive in it. But it is not the whole of who we are as human beings, and it doesn’t have to determine how we value ourselves our what our lives are, or should be, about.

We can tell a different story: purpose has nothing to do with “earning a living.”

Instead, maybe purpose is about learning to listen to the still, small voice inside us that knows that just existing—and being grateful for this life—is enough.

How do you feel about your life’s purpose? Comment or post your answer in the comments on Substack and I’ll read them!

Check out the details about The Bravely Examined Life here.