Tag: purpose

I am a calming influence

6:34pm, pacific standard time, apartment in Chandler, Arizona, USA, Thursday evening, July 21, 2022. A couple of weeks ago I wrote two questions on an index card; who am I? And, What do I want? The idea came from listening to a speech on finding purpose in life. The speaker noted we often limit thinking about our path in life to narrow parameters, without fully exploring what we want. In order to find purpose we must first find our identity. I wrote the questions with a thick marker and placed the card in the console of my car. I could see it as I drove and reflected on the questions but couldn’t articulate an answer until now. Here it is; I am a calming influence in the world and I want to share that with others. I have known that since I worked as a chaplain and now I have reclaimed it. No matter what I do going forward that will always be my guiding energy.

The end of guilt

5:31am, pacific standard time, apartment in Chandler, Arizona, USA, Wednesday morning, May 4, 2022. Feeling guilty is a constant companion in my life. Many times, I experience guilt without knowing a single reason why. In those incidences, when I am out in the emotional cold so to speak, my mind searches for the cause of my culpability, with no result being too absurd: a long misremembered childhood incident, calling a co-worker by the wrong name or a fumbled exchange in the grocery store line. All of them silly thoughts that serve no purpose other than to create a moment of internal embarrassment that is quickly forgotten. But there are other times the cause and effect of guilt is more severe; a missed opportunity to hug a lost loved one, failing to arrive on time for an important milestone as a parent or breaking the solemn vows of marriage. In those instances the internal emotion of guilt is often profound and lasts much longer. Yet, regardless of the reason the common theme in both those cases are the guilt emanates from inside. I can no longer be in a relationship where the other person deliberately tries to make me feel guilty. Life is hard enough without someone conspiring to bring me down. Nobody deserves that. I can feel guilty enough all on my own.

Never enough

9:11am in my office, Phoenix, Thursday morning. I always have an undefined feeling of need for something more. a better job, a bigger house, more money, more fame, more love etc. That need remains undefined precisely because I can never fill it. There isn’t a final destination, or even a next step, there is only occasional accomplishments; vague notions I moved forward or got better in some way. They are usually not even tangible or measurable. It could be a job seemed more rewarding than the previous one. Or my base salary increased slightly. Perhaps a new living situation featured an amenity others did not. Whatever the case I scramble to appease that which can not be appeased. My life is simply trying to find peace in an existence of unrest.

Purpose

6:01am Friday morning. The thought entered my mind and found purchase; If in the course of my life I changed one small circumstance would everything be different? Perhaps if I got a job that didn’t suck, or if I changed my living arrangement, would emptiness stop growing inside me? Would I cease feeling alone, could I release negative feelings and ultimately reside in peace? The questions swirled around me like detritus and the answers I found were terrible. I couldn’t change the circumstances of my life, I was killing myself for nothing and when my time came I would disappear without acknowledgement from an unforgiving world.

Friday morning

5:43am Friday morning. I came to realize I was in the system, a flow that shaped my existence. Whether contrived or natural I did not know. All I knew was my place and interaction with the system up until now. In my youth I was languidly passive . I wanted experiences. I partook in the rituals the system offered. Sports, dates, school, jobs, vacations. As I became older I vowed to conquer the system. To find one thing I excelled at and to rise to the top of my game. But now I realized I was not going to conquer anything. And with that what was I to do? Then it came to me. What my purpose was. All my frustration led to this moment. I was to cleanse the system. Not all of it, but the one piece I could. The one representative of my failure. I may not conquer the system but I can do my part to remove a malignancy. And wasn’t that a beautiful purpose in and of itself?

Thursday morning

Thursday morning 5:31am. Did I spend most of my life anxious, worried, wondering what I was missing, what I didn’t have, when I should have been enjoying what was right in front of me? All the peace I ever felt was when I existed in a moment. When a specific time and place shone so bright it blocked my overactive mind from wandering. Should I search for circumstance that affords me such happiness? Can I control my thoughts and make any situation so pure? Or is there only divine convergence of situation and person that creates such a thing? Perhaps beautiful moments exist only because some ethereal being loves me, wants me to be happy and grants me a time when all feels right with the world.

Change

5:40am I don’t know how to change. How to be different. I don’t know what I would do if this blog were “discovered.” How would my world change if I received attention? I work in hospice. I have a public persona but the real me remains hidden. Writing these posts is a way to put myself out there to be discovered. But there is dissonance. The hospice director is a carefully crafted facade. It serves purpose. It is a image I use to make money and care for my family. The post writer is the inner me. He is the voice in my head. My best friend. what would I do if people at work saw these posts? What if prospective employers saw them? Family, friends. Strangers? I want more than anything to be known. I want more than anything to remain hidden.