“To invent your own life’s meaning is not easy, but it’s still allowed, and I think you’ll be happier for the trouble.” ― Bill Watterson

Purpose.  It’s talked about like the Holy Grail.  You’ve got to have it to know yourself.  To be “arrived.”  Without your purpose you’re lost and floundering.  etc. etc.

I disagree.

When people talk about answering the question of why they’re here or what their purpose is, it always sounds like we expect it to be one thing.

We approach it like, “I’m here to have dinner.  Once I’ve decided on, prepared and eaten that meal, it will be done and that’s all there is.  All there needs to be.  I just want it to be the RIGHT meal!” 😉  

So we put off trying new foods.  We read the cookbooks of different countries and cuisines but never experiment with them.  We wait to grocery shop for so many new and interesting ingredients because we’re trying to determine that single right meal so we know exactly what to shop for. In the meantime, we keep eating the same boring things every day or even fasting, waiting to be sure and clear on that One. Right. Meal.

Now, I admit that having that one clear thing that feels like it fully expresses your soul, your heart and your mind all at once is fantastic AF.  And it’s on the days where we feel lost or directionless that we wish just a little (or a lot) that we were Oprah too, able to leap that tall skyscraper of purpose in a single beautiful bound.

But when I facilitate my Core Self Discovery groups, I teach that purpose is already living alive and well inside us.  Everyone of us.  And it has been since the beginning, wherever you want that beginning to be for you.

I tell them that I believe their purpose has been living its way out from inside of them from the start.  Can they catch the clues?  Find hints that… that what?  …That show them more clearly who they are?

What if purpose doesn’t live in words we can speak with the confidence of god himself?  What if purpose isn’t an arrival point on some elusive treasure map of success or fulfillment?

What if why I’m here is to daily practice living fully and truthfully from my own heart?  

What if purpose lives in how present I am with myself?  With my life right this moment?  

What if?…

A friend said to me today, “You seem to really know why you’re here.  I’m so glad you figured that out!” with the implication that he was still searching and uncertain.  I had to laugh.  No matter how clear I get about *why I choose to be here*, I’m always still asking.  

There’s magic in the asking.

If we’re really honest, I think we already knew this.

This I do know:  I want to savor as many “simple or gourmet, right–and wrong–meals” as I’m able to adventurously discover during this crazy go on the planet.  And to share in them with a lot of people.

There’s a purpose in there somewhere.