What's your purpose?

I think a lot, way more than I'd like and consider healthy, actually. It makes me uneasy. I see people committing to all sorts of lifestyles, and none of them is it for me. Mine isn't either. And I think about it. I haven't found a purpose for any of this, and I'm always wondering what is next; although, I have a feeling that there doesn't always have to be a next, at least not for a great while. It'd be great to think nothing sometimes, to feel nothing, at least nothing but contentment.

I wish I could be satisfied with what I have, especially with the choices I make, and go about
my days without giving everything a second thought, but more often than not that is not the case. I'm always questioning every single thing I do and even more so the things I don't do. I so desperately need to know the why of what's happening to me and around me. It's ridiculous. When I finally achieve a goal I so eagerly wanted to, I catch myself thinking "what now?" It's like nothing will ever be sufficient and I'll never be at peace with the place where I am at. It's not a feeling that's new to me. It has always been here. Always. For as long as I can remember. It's the same feeling that made me fill endless journals throughout my adolescence. It's frustrating to me that some of the questions and doubts, and the uncertainty about life, that I had at 14-years-old still bother me in so many ways. 

I know I'm not alone in this and a lot of people out there are just as frustrated as I am, if not more. I'm not giving myself a pat on back for my metaphysical thinking. 

I look for answers in books, song lyrics, daily news, traditional religions, philosophy, and google, anything that will offer some clarity. I still got nothing. So, having this inner debate the other night, I googled "What's your purpose?" This article came up: How to Discover Your Life Purpose in About 20 Minutes. 

I'm completely against any of the self-help crap, but I gave it a try anyway because a) I didn't have anything better to do, b) I was in distress, and c) even though it might work for some people, it's always good to prove this stuff wrong. So I sat down and started working on my list of purposes. Here's what I came up with:

What’s your purpose?

None. Graduate from college. Get a job. Get married. Have two and a half kids. Travel the world. Read all the classics. Read every book ever written (the good ones). Be really smart. Find the love of your life. Live in a little English cottage. Listen to songs that make you happy and sad at the same time. Write more. Be an actor. Join the circus. Join a church. Become a nun. Found a church. Move to Cuba. Buy a house. Join the Doctors without borders. Go work with kids .  Adopt a baby. Become a witch. Be a teacher. Join a political party. Change the world. Be a hippie. Go live in San Francisco. Move back to Brasil. Live in Gramado. Be a good cook. Open a bakery. Open a Starbucks franchise. Open a café. Open a little new age shop on some neat tropical island. Learn languages. Make friends. Fall for a charming person and run off to fight injustice with them. Write stories. Tell stories. Live alone in a little cottage in the woods. Move back to my hometown. Work with my mom. Live in Paris. Travel through South America. Live in Buenos Aires. Become a truck driver. Say I love you when I mean it. Become completely fluent in French. Move to British Columbia. Declutter. Make enough money to live comfortably. Live without internet. Be rich. Handwrite. Write poetry. Tour Europe. Go to NYC. Live healthily. Eat well. Bike. Find your dream job. Work in a daycare. Teach kids. Work in a hospital. Go live in the Congo. Help people. Become a Buddhist. Become a Buddhist monk. Learn how to meditate. Move to the East Timor. Let go of material goods. Travel. Live in a different place every year. Live in Canada. Get a dog. Have 5 kids. Have no kids. Allow myself to be happy. Worry less. Find a good therapist and start therapy sessions. Buy a horse. Let feelings out. Speak the truth. Buy a car. Buy a trailer. Make the trailer your home. Join the gypsies. Go to China. Believe. Live in a small studio in a big city. Be alone. Empty my mind. Be content with the life I have. Live with the minimum necessary. Give stuff away. Not look back. Accept that other people will fail and disappoint you. Accept that I'll disappoint other people. Love people regardless. Be open. Be a hippie in Arembepe. Shut up more often. Join the guerrilla. Be gentle. Have faith. Listen. Spend some time in India. Trust people. Be Amish for a month. Act. Dance. Sleep less. Be more active. Have fun. Be a foreign correspondent for The New York Times. Drink beers. Enjoy the game. Enjoy what I have now. Don’t think about the future. Join the army. Live in a fishing village. Watch less TV. Accept that I prob won't be able to watch people's reactions when I die. Care less about fictional characters. Have discussions and still be friends afterwards. Talk nicely. Learn how to drive a truck. Respect people. Be kind. Pay my bills. Care less. It’s ok to feel deeply. Believe that people care and not everybody leaves. Believe in love. Settle down. Accept that there doesn’t need to be a purpose. Buy a motorcycle. Write a book. Feel saudade. Be silly. Be the clown. Host parties. Live in Rio. Make grandma proud.

It took me some 20 minutes to compile this little list and the whole thing turned out to be a list of my short-lived life goals, if you can call them that. The very first part of the list, from graduating from college to having kids, is what my family always told me I should do (I was following the article's steps to the best I could). Most of the rest is me being delusional. It even got deeper and sentimental as I went on, but there were no tears, none whatsoever. Thus, I proved this thing wrong. 

I still got nothing in terms of my purpose in life. Mostly, I think all of my "purposes" were incredibly selfish and one-sided. I focused mostly on my own self and what could make me happy and that's not what I want my purpose in my life to be. There were also a lot of buys and moves in it, which maybe means my purpose in life is to be a shopaholic with a travel addiction? I want there to be more to it than just me. I also want to stop asking myself "then what?" because even as I wrote all of that, at the end of the day I could have achieved every single one of these things (ok, maybe not every single one, but some), and I know I'd still be wondering "then what?" It's daunting indeed.

What about you? Have you found your purpose yet?