A Purpose for Professional Life
What if what people pursue when they describe a professional life with purpose is in reality pursuing the thing they love? Truly successful professionals, those who can sustain the kind of energy and devotion necessary to continue the good fight, do so by unchaining the gifts that they possess and expanding the lives of others by sharing their love. And by love I mean affection, friendship, passion, and charity. Friendship and charity, in particular, are the kinds of love we need to incorporate into our professional pursuits in order to give them a sense of purpose.
Look at the joy that people bring to your life. I bet you they bear it upon a love, a passion that cannot be denied. That is the kind of thing I mean here. Build a professional community on friendship and give freely of your knowledge, experience, and emotions, the best kind of charity. It is good because it is real, it is you, and it is done with love.
Daily we are making decisions that, ultimately, are influenced by security or the lack thereof, by the fear of uncertainty, by doubt, by an earnest desire to achieve our full capacity (to be recognized as the best at what we do), to enjoy what we do with our lives and to not have to feel like we are simply filling the days in pursuit of stability, the status quo.
The beautiful thing is that, setting death aside, there is nothing done that cannot be undone with the love that exists in your purpose and there is no act, which has as its basis the love of its enactor, that will not warmly be received by somebody somewhere. Love gives purpose and acting on that purpose amplifies in others and there is where real change, reality-altering change, resides.
Do the thing you love and forget the rest. That’s what I plan on doing.
