Purpose
Some people are born knowing what they want to do with their life, others find it early on, some find it later and I suspect many of us never figure it out at all. For me it's been more of a process of weeding things out and doing what was right at the time, ever subject to change as time progressed. For example, I was a very talented pianist as a child. Everyone around me was pushing for me to be a concert pianist. But while I loved playing piano, I enjoyed it most when I was playing for myself. I never enjoyed performances and I knew instinctively that was not the road to follow. I gave up playing piano completely in my teenage years, but much later on in my life I ended up as the bass player for Wolves@th'Door and that's something that would have not have happened if I had not played piano as a child. And that's pretty much the story of my life so far - all the different things I have done, all the various jobs I have held, it all builds to where I am right now without any clear picture of where I'm heading. There's no single purpose there, yet I know it's all connected somehow. Those two years working fast-food at Wendy's were great preparation for my current job in a call center some 30 years later. Somewhere in all that chaos is an order and purpose, but unfortunately it's nothing I can put my finger on and say, "Ah-hah! This is why I'm here!" And maybe it's just that those of us who aren't called to any grand endeavor have a hard time recognizing that the little day to day things can be just as important. After all, the person that was stuck in the parking lot that you let cut in front of you isn't going to call you 20 years later to thank you for letting them be on time for the job interview that let them get the job that allowed them to come up with some world changing concept. They might remember the event and even mention it in their biography, but you'll never know that you were the one that changed the outcome of possibilities.

There's a bumper sticker that's popular around here that says, "Practice Random Acts of Kindness." Rob and I practice a similar philosophy in that we let people cut in front of us in traffic, give a bum a dollar or a cigarette when it feels right, open a door for someone or help a stranger out in some way; little things that we call getting karma points because we know that what comes around goes around. Does any of that make a difference in the long run? Are we changing the world? Maybe not, but who's to say our little action today doesn't positively affect someone that does manage to change the world later. I think that too many of us, myself included at times, wander around in life thinking that our lives don't matter, that we haven't made a difference and our existence is pointless if we haven't reached some pinnacle of fame or fortune. But I know there are people out there who have no clue that they had a life-changing effect on my life, nor would I ever be able to find them to tell them that. And I have to assume that somewhere along the line, I have done the same. And I would bet that you have too.