Milestone Musings on Mission/Purpose

I am sure that a lot of the soul-searching I've been doing recently is because I am approaching a milestone birthday. I find myself looking back on the choices I've made in my life, taking inventory, thinking about the things I am proud of and the opportunities I still have. I am looking forward to the next part of my life and in typical fashion I'm worried that I may not have time to complete everything on my list of things to do and see. I'm not a big worrier, but I do I love life and don't want to waste a minute of what's left of mine.

I have been reading a book about the stories we tell ourselves about our lives and how we can write new stories for ourselves that will take us where we want to go. Our destinies do follow our lives, not the other way around. The story we tell ourselves and others about ourselves is what creates our life. It's a book that discusses the power of story.

And it's a book that is causing a personal crisis for me.

Here's the thing. The author says that once you define your purpose - what really matters - that everything else can fall into place. And he says that whatever it is, it should be able to motivate you to walk across a plank 175 feet in the air, wind gusts or no gusts, seven days a week, no questions asked. It's the wind in your sails, the yeast in your bread. And I am having a crisis because I am not sure I can identify that thing in myself.

What's wrong with me?

The author of the book, Jim Loehr, suggests that you imagine what you'd like to hear at your eulogy or to have carved on your tombstone. For some people it's to make their parents proud, for others it's to be the most successful earner in their social circle, for others to seek out adventure and risk. He uses purpose interchangeably with "ultimate mission" and describes it as the thing that constantly renews your spirit, that motivates you when nothing else can. I don't seem to be able to land on one thing.

I think it was Steven Covey who suggested you make a statement about something you want to do and then ask why and keep asking why until you get down to that underlying purpose. When I try to do that, I end up with a bunch of whys. It doesn't strike me as having the focus I'm supposed to have with this ultimate mission. A tiny little voice in my head suggested "maybe I'm over-thinking this." I quashed it and began looking around the internet for ways to find my life's purpose. Mary Jaksch suggested that I answer 15 questions such as what would you do if money were no barrier? and what would you do if you knew you couldn't fail? Another blogger suggested that I write "what is my life's purpose" at the top of a blank piece of paper and then keep answering it over and over until something resonated. All of this seemed like a waste of time.

Then I found Dr. Susan Biali.

A couple of years ago Biali wrote a blog for Psychology Today (check it out) and her confession in it sounded so familiar that I couldn't believe it. When she says "[i]f you're blessed with tons of different ideas or talents, celebrate them rather than bending to pressure to 'just pick one'" I can feel it resonate through my entire being. It's exactly the problem I am having with this book. I am like a kid in a candy store when it comes to life. There are so many choices I can't seem to settle down on just one. How can I possibly reconcile things like writing songs/screenplays/fiction/blogs, helping my son grow into a good man, playing guitar, cave conservation and exploration, being a good partner, motivating sales people, world travel and natural farming (I'm currently thinking bees....)?

Biali suggests that you should embrace all the different things you know. Give yourself room to try on the different interests and ideas you have. Some will stick and some will naturally fall away. For her, living her way into her passion and purpose has been the process, not honing in on one thing.

And that helps me answer the question for now because I think I am starting to have an understanding of what matters to me in this moment: to continually learn and grow. I have always been a curious person who takes things apart in my mind. It's one reason I was such a good interviewer when I did radio. I like learning how things and people tick, and then placing that in the context of my own life to make me a better person and hopefully more able to share it with others. I do really want to do my part to make this a better world. I have done a lot of things in my life. I have had so many blessings so far and I don't see that ending anytime soon. I am so thankful for everything that I've experienced in my life, good and bad. (You bet, I'll take them both!)

Maybe it's no wonder that a Charles Schultz cartoon I read years ago has continued to stick in my mind and always brings a smile to my face. In it, Charlie Brown is talking to Linus and mentions someone being 21 years old. Linus replies "don't be ridiculous, no one lives to be that old!" Or does that many things.

And yet, here I am.

Things Are Happening Underground

The Decline of Art in the US

This past Saturday, there was a special panel discussion at the Sundance Film Festival called Power of Story: Making Art Matter (You can view it online). One of the panelists mentioned that the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking has been administered since 1966 to capture individual creativity levels. I'm paraphrasing from memory, but what I found interesting, is that the panelist said around 1990, American test scores leveled off after having increased dramatically every year prior to that and have actually been decreasing.


So I went looking. I discovered that Kyung Hee Kim, an associate professor of educational psychology at the College of William & Mary, performed analyses of Torrance test scores for almost 300,000 American adults and children and found that all of the scores of the Lateral/Innovative thinking factor, Vertical/Adaptive thinking factor, and Creative personality factor have significantly decreased or have significantly started decreasing. The decrease has been more in recent years than earlier years.


The Torrance test measures creativing in not only artistic areas, but science, interpersonal relationships and others. Dr. Kim says that in western cultures we think of creativity as artistic but that in eastern cultures they think of creativity as scientific.


Dr. Kim believes the decline in U.S. creativity may be in part because kids spend more time with television than in activities that utilize creativity - playing outside for one thing. She also thinks the lack of creativity development and the stifling of children’s creative opportunities in classrooms is having an impact. She is quick to point out that it's speculation since there haven't really been significant studies to look at this.


Creativity is so important to me that I devised a game for my son when he was almost a toddler. We've been doing it so long, I can't remember when we really started. He would ask to be told stories and we started out telling stories to him. After awhile, I wanted him to be able to come up with stories too. So I came up with a game that we played for years.


One of us would come up with three things and then the other would have to build a story around it and tell that story. As time went on, we would come up with the craziest mismatches we could possibly imagine and still the stories came. Good ones, terrible ones (mine mostly fell into that category), mediocre ones. Funny and poignant ones. It was a great game, and I hope it helped my son's creativity even though we didn't start with that intention.


I've also shared with my son the love I have for caving. We have spent many hours crawling through muddy passages and sloshing through borehole passages with water up to our thighs. On those trips we speculate about what might be down a side passage or how to get the best photograph of a pink planaria.

I like to think I'm a relatively well-rounded, creative type and I hope my son shares that capacity. He's been writing a science-fiction novel since he was about 12 and he's thinking about studying physics, astronomy and marine biology when he goes to college in a couple of years, so I'm hopeful.