My purpose blog garnered quite a bit of feedback; I think because it seemed so downcast and somewhat hopeless. I should write that I am not without hope nor do I feel the weight of a day-to-day search for meaning. Most of the time I am actually quite happy and feel that, while I feel I lack some centerpoint on which to direct my soul, I do feel I have important actions to take and relationships to cultivate and value. This is quite a full life and I think one that most of us have. Yet there are those who hold an enviable key to a calling in life—a point in the stars to gravitate toward that in some ways can be even spiritual in nature. I see this in my students who come to my school—day in and day out they show the brave and wonderful calling of bringing the divine spark to the world so that it may feel just a bit more hopeful and a bit more soothed at being in this incredibly beautiful, yet scary bit of rock spinning at a mind-boggling speed in the middle of space. I have several friends who have music, visual art, or creative writing at their centerpoint—called to bring something new into the world that hasn’t been here before. Then there are friends who have gone on to be nurses, psychologists, and medical doctors—both allopathic and alternative. And then there are those who have children—choosing to feel a pull toward the nurturing center of mother- and fatherhood. These are examples of purpose. At times, I think purpose is a luxury, as much as it is often felt to be a necessity—yet without these courageous souls engaging in these activities, human life would be decidedly worse-off.
For myself, I feel stripped of the luxury in many respects. I have transformed my “disabilities” and “losses” into missions and positive events. In some ways, critical events such as my school, which I recognize places such a central role at fostering individuals to bring to bear on the world around them their purpose. And its effects are global in nature. I have students from around the world seeking to learn a range of intellectual and spiritual paths. And that is and will always be an important and lasting legacy I will leave the world when my time here is done. But something is still missing for me.
But it does not make me sad. It makes me search. The boundaries of my life have delimited my purpose. There are a host of “I can’ts” and that is okay. This makes the mystery of what is Katie to do with her life—that is deep inside her veins. This is, I think, an ultimate challenge of self-knowledge; of answering the eternal question of Who am I? Only for me this question is more of Who am I if I am not…? The world of human culture has paths that we are to tread. There is the path of the psychologist and he or she does XYZ. The artist walks down a less defined path, but a path of ABC nevertheless. But if all of these paths are overgrown then I must tread down, to quote Robert Frost, the road “less travelled by”.
For enjoyment, Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken”
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
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