MEANING AND PURPOSE
I see a guy dancing, he’s dancing up quite a storm, he’s in a sweat about it. I’m like, geez, this guy really likes dancing, and incidentally, he’s appears somewhat good at it. At least it’s mildly entertaining to watch him gyrate around and flail those scrawny arms and legs with such gusto. Now here’s a guy who’s obviously in the flow, steeped in his life’s purpose, someone who knows what it feels like to find their true meaning for being alive and just do it regardless who’s watching or what they think.
That’s how it appeared to me. Little did I realize the whole situation. I moved a bit closer and took in more detail. Only then did it dawn on me why this guy was so into his dance. The simple fact was – the fucking floor was red hot. His dance was not some mystical expression of divinely-inspired destiny welling up from within as a true expression of his soul’s holy work on this planet. Oh no. His intense dance was merely a reaction to the shitty painful situation he was trapped in. Dance or burn, that’s about as meaningful as it got. Standing there watching him dance, now knowing the truth, it made me reflect and wonder. How much of what goes on with people in this world is like this dancing man? How much of human life is the pure expression of true purpose and meaning – and how much is simply us having no choice but to dance in an endless attempt to lessen the burn?
There’s a popular psychological theory that says one cannot choose to be interested in just anything. According to this theory, we are somehow drawn to what interests us and how that takes place is an internal process not well understood. Likewise it is said you cannot force yourself to be interested in just anything. True interest grabs you in a mysterious way, it wells up from within from somewhere too deep to know in its completeness. And so, the theory goes, what one finds meaningful follows suit. Meaning is not something we merely put on like a suit of clothes and we could choose any old suit to suffice. Our meaning, like what interest us, is something that grabs us, it wells up from within, it’s something we’re drawn to out of deep internal forces we don’t fully understand. The same holds true for our values. This theory also says it is not possible for us to simply create our own values, they too are something internal and intrinsic and drawn up from the depths of ourselves in ways we don’t fully understand. All three of these, our interests, meaning, and values, grab a hold of us and shake us to our core.
There is much to agree with when considering this theory. It does seem that interest and meaning and values are not superficial appendages that are acquired primarily from external forces. Something within plays a fundamental role in how we come to discover these things for ourselves and what forms they take in our lives. But there is something missing in this theory, something that reflects back on the dancing man and the burning hot floor. Perhaps not all of what interests us or we find meaningful is so nobly acquired or faithfully pursued in a healthy way. Could something else mimic this process? Case in point as example – the lady who volunteers at the soup kitchen.
There once was a lady who volunteered at a soup kitchen. She had a great interest in feeding the homeless and found tremendous meaning in showing up week after week, year after year to dish out donated food to indigent members of the community. Everyone who knew this lady was impressed with her dedication and unflagging work ethic in always being at the soup kitchen to faithfully distribute the food to the empty plates of the suffering people who formed a line in front of her. What could be wrong with this picture? How could we ever doubt the sincerity and good works exhibited by this lady? How indeed. From the outside, it does appear that this lady had found her calling. She obviously was grabbed by a mystical interest that tapped into a greater purpose for her life and who could doubt that she was finding remarkable fulfillment in living out her days in such a meaningful way.
And then one day the lady is on the line, serving food for the homeless like she always does, and she is feeling a bit tired. She didn’t sleep well the night before, the neighbors were a bit noisy, and she just got an unexpected bill and she’s worried about fitting the new debt into her budget, and to top it off her cat is sick and she’s not looking forward to taking it to the vet. To sum up, she’s tired and feeling a bit low on energy this particular day, a lot of situational things are weighing her down and making her emotionally vulnerable, but she tells herself everyone has down days and she goes to the soup kitchen anyway to help raise her spirits because her meaningful work always brings a smile to her face. And for a while, it works and serving food does make her feel better and she loses herself and her troubles in the act of service she’s providing. But then there’s a sudden reversal and she bursts out in tears, right on the line, right in front of the homeless people she’s feeding. She loses control of her emotions to the point where she needs to leave and go home. When she gets there, she can’t imagine what happened. Why the sudden breakdown with emotions so powerful and raw? It doesn’t make sense and so she goes to see a therapist.
The therapist, like us encountering the dancing man, steps closer to her situation to get more detail. It is discovered that her crying fit on the food line occurred just as a little girl held her plate out for food. The woman didn’t know this little girl, never saw her before, and in fact usually didn’t see many kids on the line at all, mostly it was adults who were on the street and passing before her. So why should serving the little girl provoke such a response? Well, it was a down day for her so she was already vulnerable. But that wasn’t all. Delving deeper, the woman is finally coaxed to reveal her early childhood to the therapist. She tells of being the oldest child and at age seven watching her younger sisters aged three and four go hungry. The family frequently didn’t have enough to eat during that period of their lives and she hated watching her little sisters suffer for lack of food. Since she was older, she felt partly responsible for this; in fact, her mother would often leave her to take care of her younger sisters and so real responsibility was felt all the time. Helpless to remedy much less fully understand the situation, the seven year old felt tremendous guilt for the suffering of her sisters. Along with this guilt was a giant compassion, wanting nothing but to see the sisters happy and content. Not being old enough to do anything about the situation nor understand the true parameters of it, the seven year old stuffed her feelings away, deep within her, until they were left to fester, forgotten in a shadowy place.
The therapist worked with this woman and got in touch with that wounded seven year old inside of her. It became clear that her compulsion to volunteer at the soup kitchen, feeding the homeless, was a projection of her unconscious desire to feed her sisters, aged 3 and 4, back when she was age seven. But this work at the soup kitchen would never resolve the issue with her sisters, it would never fill that hole in her, none of that was actually feeding those sisters. That time was gone and there was no way to go back and remedy the scarcity they as children felt then. Nevertheless, every meal she served to the homeless was a projected attempt of that wounded seven year old to deal with the bygone situation. The woman had to get in touch with that seven year old inside of her and release her from the energy of responsibility for what happened to herself and her sisters. The woman had to bring that unconscious material forward, make it conscious, and release the negative energies of that which had built up over the years. She needed to see the situation from an adult perspective now and release her trapped seven year old from the shame and guilt and pain associated with not being able to feed her little sisters. Only then could this woman be free from the trauma of those events and be healed of the repressed negativity that was haunting her soul.
And so the woman healed her inner child, made peace with her past, and moved forward. The only other thing that developed was quite unexpected. She found she suddenly had no overwhelming compulsion to work at the soup kitchen anymore. No longer was she projecting a need to feed her little sisters onto the present world. Sometimes she still went and helped out at the soup kitchen, but no longer did such activities grab her interest and have the overriding meaning for her it once had. Meaning, it seems, does well up from within, from deep and perhaps mystical places. And yes, we can’t force ourselves to be interested in something or find something meaningful. But that doesn’t always mean what wells from from within is all divine purpose and destiny. Sometimes it’s a call to clarity, to locate the places within us where we got hurt, places still hiding their dark secrets. And once we deal with those trapped energies and heal from the projections that come from that darkness, only then are we freed to find and pursue our real meaning and true potentials in life. Not all of the meaning we chase is true life purpose. Sometimes it’s a symptom of what we’re stuck on.
It makes me wonder – how many people live out their lives believing they are living their purpose, believing they have found their meaning in life, when in actual fact they are simply spinning projections over the down-spiraling hole that sinks into the wounds they won’t look at. From a distance, it may appear we’re all just doing our dance. It’s a fine dance, a dance of drive and energy and the drive and effort appears meaningful, a real life’s purpose. But take a closer look. Wouldn’t it be weird to find out most people in the world are dancing on a hot floor, and nearly none of us have a clue about our real life’s purpose. How could we? Our dance never gives us a rest to encounter it and most of us go to our graves still dancing, never having been freed of our predicament. We live out lives under a delusion that what we were drawn to do so passionately was our best and brightest life when there’s a fairly good chance it certainly wasn’t. We may be a species locked into living lives of projected faux purposes, condemned by our wounds to forever spin a tortured meaning over a hole of what we won’t look into. We’ve known no other dance floor and we’ve never been surprised or concerned at how hot it is. We simply dance with passion. When we lose the causal connection between the floor, the heat, and our dance, that’s when our projection’s complete. Meanwhile, our true potential as individuals and as a species lies undiscovered, undeveloped.
That’s how it appeared to me. Little did I realize the whole situation. I moved a bit closer and took in more detail. Only then did it dawn on me why this guy was so into his dance. The simple fact was – the fucking floor was red hot. His dance was not some mystical expression of divinely-inspired destiny welling up from within as a true expression of his soul’s holy work on this planet. Oh no. His intense dance was merely a reaction to the shitty painful situation he was trapped in. Dance or burn, that’s about as meaningful as it got. Standing there watching him dance, now knowing the truth, it made me reflect and wonder. How much of what goes on with people in this world is like this dancing man? How much of human life is the pure expression of true purpose and meaning – and how much is simply us having no choice but to dance in an endless attempt to lessen the burn?
There’s a popular psychological theory that says one cannot choose to be interested in just anything. According to this theory, we are somehow drawn to what interests us and how that takes place is an internal process not well understood. Likewise it is said you cannot force yourself to be interested in just anything. True interest grabs you in a mysterious way, it wells up from within from somewhere too deep to know in its completeness. And so, the theory goes, what one finds meaningful follows suit. Meaning is not something we merely put on like a suit of clothes and we could choose any old suit to suffice. Our meaning, like what interest us, is something that grabs us, it wells up from within, it’s something we’re drawn to out of deep internal forces we don’t fully understand. The same holds true for our values. This theory also says it is not possible for us to simply create our own values, they too are something internal and intrinsic and drawn up from the depths of ourselves in ways we don’t fully understand. All three of these, our interests, meaning, and values, grab a hold of us and shake us to our core.
There is much to agree with when considering this theory. It does seem that interest and meaning and values are not superficial appendages that are acquired primarily from external forces. Something within plays a fundamental role in how we come to discover these things for ourselves and what forms they take in our lives. But there is something missing in this theory, something that reflects back on the dancing man and the burning hot floor. Perhaps not all of what interests us or we find meaningful is so nobly acquired or faithfully pursued in a healthy way. Could something else mimic this process? Case in point as example – the lady who volunteers at the soup kitchen.
There once was a lady who volunteered at a soup kitchen. She had a great interest in feeding the homeless and found tremendous meaning in showing up week after week, year after year to dish out donated food to indigent members of the community. Everyone who knew this lady was impressed with her dedication and unflagging work ethic in always being at the soup kitchen to faithfully distribute the food to the empty plates of the suffering people who formed a line in front of her. What could be wrong with this picture? How could we ever doubt the sincerity and good works exhibited by this lady? How indeed. From the outside, it does appear that this lady had found her calling. She obviously was grabbed by a mystical interest that tapped into a greater purpose for her life and who could doubt that she was finding remarkable fulfillment in living out her days in such a meaningful way.
And then one day the lady is on the line, serving food for the homeless like she always does, and she is feeling a bit tired. She didn’t sleep well the night before, the neighbors were a bit noisy, and she just got an unexpected bill and she’s worried about fitting the new debt into her budget, and to top it off her cat is sick and she’s not looking forward to taking it to the vet. To sum up, she’s tired and feeling a bit low on energy this particular day, a lot of situational things are weighing her down and making her emotionally vulnerable, but she tells herself everyone has down days and she goes to the soup kitchen anyway to help raise her spirits because her meaningful work always brings a smile to her face. And for a while, it works and serving food does make her feel better and she loses herself and her troubles in the act of service she’s providing. But then there’s a sudden reversal and she bursts out in tears, right on the line, right in front of the homeless people she’s feeding. She loses control of her emotions to the point where she needs to leave and go home. When she gets there, she can’t imagine what happened. Why the sudden breakdown with emotions so powerful and raw? It doesn’t make sense and so she goes to see a therapist.
The therapist, like us encountering the dancing man, steps closer to her situation to get more detail. It is discovered that her crying fit on the food line occurred just as a little girl held her plate out for food. The woman didn’t know this little girl, never saw her before, and in fact usually didn’t see many kids on the line at all, mostly it was adults who were on the street and passing before her. So why should serving the little girl provoke such a response? Well, it was a down day for her so she was already vulnerable. But that wasn’t all. Delving deeper, the woman is finally coaxed to reveal her early childhood to the therapist. She tells of being the oldest child and at age seven watching her younger sisters aged three and four go hungry. The family frequently didn’t have enough to eat during that period of their lives and she hated watching her little sisters suffer for lack of food. Since she was older, she felt partly responsible for this; in fact, her mother would often leave her to take care of her younger sisters and so real responsibility was felt all the time. Helpless to remedy much less fully understand the situation, the seven year old felt tremendous guilt for the suffering of her sisters. Along with this guilt was a giant compassion, wanting nothing but to see the sisters happy and content. Not being old enough to do anything about the situation nor understand the true parameters of it, the seven year old stuffed her feelings away, deep within her, until they were left to fester, forgotten in a shadowy place.
The therapist worked with this woman and got in touch with that wounded seven year old inside of her. It became clear that her compulsion to volunteer at the soup kitchen, feeding the homeless, was a projection of her unconscious desire to feed her sisters, aged 3 and 4, back when she was age seven. But this work at the soup kitchen would never resolve the issue with her sisters, it would never fill that hole in her, none of that was actually feeding those sisters. That time was gone and there was no way to go back and remedy the scarcity they as children felt then. Nevertheless, every meal she served to the homeless was a projected attempt of that wounded seven year old to deal with the bygone situation. The woman had to get in touch with that seven year old inside of her and release her from the energy of responsibility for what happened to herself and her sisters. The woman had to bring that unconscious material forward, make it conscious, and release the negative energies of that which had built up over the years. She needed to see the situation from an adult perspective now and release her trapped seven year old from the shame and guilt and pain associated with not being able to feed her little sisters. Only then could this woman be free from the trauma of those events and be healed of the repressed negativity that was haunting her soul.
And so the woman healed her inner child, made peace with her past, and moved forward. The only other thing that developed was quite unexpected. She found she suddenly had no overwhelming compulsion to work at the soup kitchen anymore. No longer was she projecting a need to feed her little sisters onto the present world. Sometimes she still went and helped out at the soup kitchen, but no longer did such activities grab her interest and have the overriding meaning for her it once had. Meaning, it seems, does well up from within, from deep and perhaps mystical places. And yes, we can’t force ourselves to be interested in something or find something meaningful. But that doesn’t always mean what wells from from within is all divine purpose and destiny. Sometimes it’s a call to clarity, to locate the places within us where we got hurt, places still hiding their dark secrets. And once we deal with those trapped energies and heal from the projections that come from that darkness, only then are we freed to find and pursue our real meaning and true potentials in life. Not all of the meaning we chase is true life purpose. Sometimes it’s a symptom of what we’re stuck on.
It makes me wonder – how many people live out their lives believing they are living their purpose, believing they have found their meaning in life, when in actual fact they are simply spinning projections over the down-spiraling hole that sinks into the wounds they won’t look at. From a distance, it may appear we’re all just doing our dance. It’s a fine dance, a dance of drive and energy and the drive and effort appears meaningful, a real life’s purpose. But take a closer look. Wouldn’t it be weird to find out most people in the world are dancing on a hot floor, and nearly none of us have a clue about our real life’s purpose. How could we? Our dance never gives us a rest to encounter it and most of us go to our graves still dancing, never having been freed of our predicament. We live out lives under a delusion that what we were drawn to do so passionately was our best and brightest life when there’s a fairly good chance it certainly wasn’t. We may be a species locked into living lives of projected faux purposes, condemned by our wounds to forever spin a tortured meaning over a hole of what we won’t look into. We’ve known no other dance floor and we’ve never been surprised or concerned at how hot it is. We simply dance with passion. When we lose the causal connection between the floor, the heat, and our dance, that’s when our projection’s complete. Meanwhile, our true potential as individuals and as a species lies undiscovered, undeveloped.
But the road guru tells me to forget all about that crap. Fact is, I think that guy is doing a mean dance and I enjoy it. The thing I forget is -- he's watching me while he's dancing - and probably he likes my dance too.
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