-

 Your purpose isn’t

 something to find, it’s

 something you form


In the crucible of psychological praxis, the phenomenon of existential drift—manifesting as apathy, desuetude, and ontological bewilderment—frequently materialises among those who contend that their lives lack an orienting telos. They articulate, often with quiet desperation, their yearning for a metaphorical North Star to illumine the otherwise nebulous terrain of their existence. Yet, it is precisely this frenetic quest for “purpose” that, paradoxically, entrenches the individual deeper within the quagmire of purposelessness. To apprehend this paradox, one must first interrogate the genealogy of “purpose” itself—a concept whose lineage entwines theology, philosophy, and the modern therapist’s lexicon alike.

From the didactic utterances of Krishna and the Buddha to the rational teleology of Aristotle and the moral aphorisms of Confucius, the notion of purpose has, across millennia, furnished humankind with a metaphysical anchor against the abyss of absurdity. The existentialists, inheriting this intellectual patrimony, reconceptualised purpose as the sine qua non of a life suffused with meaning—an existential imperative rather than a divine bequest. Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning (1946) crystallised this modern understanding, positing that survival itself is contingent upon the presence of an animating raison d’être. Nevertheless, the subsequent commodification of his insight—visible in the self-help industry’s incessant exhortations to “find your purpose”—has diluted its profundity into a marketable cliché.

To treat purpose as something to be “found,” as if it were a Platonic form awaiting discovery, is to assume an ontological deficiency within the self. Such presupposition engenders anxiety, for the individual becomes preoccupied with the deficit rather than the potential plenitude of their inner life. Moreover, the rhetoric of “finding” implies that purpose, once unearthed, attains immutability—thereby breeding a sterile conservatism inimical to growth or metamorphosis. The entrepreneurial appropriation of this ideal further distorts it, transmuting existential longing into a monetisable enterprise, a grotesque symbiosis of self-realisation and neoliberal capitalism.

By contrast, to conceive of purpose as something one forms rather than finds inaugurates an ontological inversion: purpose ceases to be a concealed artefact awaiting discovery and becomes an evolving artefact of praxis—something cultivated, sculpted, and perpetually rearticulated. Purpose thus reveals itself not as a destination but as a verb, an ongoing negotiation between one’s inner impulses and the contingencies of existence. It is already immanent within us, nascent in our quotidian curiosities and the faint yet vital stirrings of joy. This paradigm foregrounds process over possession, flux over fixity, and formation over finality.

Purpose, in this reconceptualisation, becomes autotelic: it justifies itself through being rather than through external outcomes. Its pursuit enacts meaning rather than merely representing it. When instantiated therapeutically, this view demands intentional cultivation—what the clinician terms “A Day on Purpose.” Through reflective imagination, clients are invited to envisage a day emancipated from instrumental duties—a temporal canvas upon which to enact what feels meaningful and connective. In the case of “Frank,” the accountant who rediscovers vitality through communion with nature, purpose is neither bestowed nor discovered; it is formed in the interstice between reflection and action, in the incremental decisions—perhaps only by a single percent each week—that tether the human subject to the wider field of life.

In the final analysis, purpose thus conceived resists the vacuity of both metaphysical absolutism and late-capitalist commodification. It is a self-renewing praxis, an ever-unfinished symphony of becoming—one that demands not revelation, but cultivation; not discovery, but deliberate formation.


VOCABS FROM THE PASSAGE-

  1. Crucible – A severe test or trial; metaphorically, a place or situation in which different elements interact to produce something new. (Used to describe the psychological setting of human struggle.)

  2. Praxis – Practical application of theory; action guided by reflection. (Common in philosophy and psychology.)

  3. Existential drift – A state of meaninglessness or lack of direction in life.

  4. Apathy / Desuetude / Ontological bewilderment –

    • Apathy: Lack of feeling or interest.

    • Desuetude: A state of disuse or inactivity.

    • Ontological bewilderment: Confusion about the nature of one’s being or existence.

  5. Telos – Greek term meaning the ultimate aim or purpose of something. (Central in Aristotle’s philosophy.)

  6. Metaphorical North Star – Symbol for one’s guiding principle or purpose.

  7. Frenetic – Fast-paced, uncontrolled, or frantic.

  8. Quagmire – A complex, difficult situation; literally, a bog or swamp.

  9. Genealogy – The study of origins or historical development; often used in philosophy (Nietzsche, Foucault).

  10. Entwines – Interweaves or connects intricately.

  11. Didactic utterance – Statement intended to teach moral or philosophical lessons.

  12. Teleology – Philosophical explanation of phenomena in terms of the purpose they serve rather than the cause by which they arise.

  13. Sine qua non – An essential condition; literally “without which not.”

  14. Raison d’être – French for “reason for being”; fundamental justification or purpose.

  15. Commodification – Turning something (like meaning or purpose) into a marketable product.

  16. Ontological deficiency / plenitude –

  • Deficiency: A lack in the essence or being of something.

  • Plenitude: A state of fullness or completeness.

  1. Immutable – Unchanging over time, unalterable.

  2. Sterile conservatism – A rigidity that prevents creativity or transformation.

  3. Neoliberal capitalism – Economic ideology prioritizing free markets, individual entrepreneurship, and privatization.

  4. Ontological inversion – Reversal in the way existence is conceptualized; rethinking from being found to being formed.

  5. Immanent / Nascent / Quotidian –

  • Immanent: Existing within or inherent.

  • Nascent: Beginning to exist or develop.

  • Quotidian: Everyday, ordinary, habitual.

  1. Flux / Fixity –

  • Flux: Continuous change.

  • Fixity: Permanent, unchanging state.

  1. Autotelic – Having an end or purpose within itself; self-fulfilling.

  2. Therapeutically instantiated – Made concrete in therapeutic practice.

  3. Communion with nature – Deep, harmonious connection with the natural world.

  4. Interstice – A small space between things; metaphorically, the subtle threshold between thought and action.

  5. Metaphysical absolutism – Belief in unchanging, universal truths.

  6. Commodification – Making something into a commodity to be sold or traded.

  7. Self-renewing praxis – Continuous cycle of reflective action and growth.

  8. Ontological / Metaphysical – Related to the nature of being or existence itself.

SOURCE- THE PSYCHE KNOW YOUR SELF

WORDS COUNT- 650

F.K SCORE- 16


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

-
Image
                                     FEEL PHILOSOPHY  Empathy and sympathy, though habitually conflated in colloquial usage, are in fact conceptually discrete, each rooted in fundamentally divergent affective architectures predicated upon the notion of affections. Affections, as opposed to passions, are volitional, immaterial mental states-deliberate cognitive-emotional phenomena such as enthusiasm, resentment, or forgiveness-that serve as the substrate for both empathy and sympathy. Passions, by contrast, are involuntary, corporeal responses-manifestations of the body’s reflexive engagement with stimuli, such as the pain experienced upon contact with a hot surface. These passions are unbidden and somatically anchored, whereas affections are consciously willed, persisting as attitudes or dispositions within the mental domain. This bifurcation between passions and affections is pivotal: em...
Read more
-
Image
  Introverts are excluded  unfairly in an extraverts’  world Life as an introvert presents ongoing challenges, particularly in environments designed for extraverts, from open-plan offices to networking at crowded conferences. Unlike shyness, which stems from the fear of negative judgment, introversion is characterized by a strong preference for quiet and less stimulating surroundings, as first conceptualized by Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung in the 1920s. Jung described introverts as individuals who direct their energy inward, processing thoughts and feelings privately, while extraverts channel their focus outward and thrive on social interactions that invigorate them. This distinction, deeply embedded in contemporary psychology, is no longer seen as a strict dichotomy but rather as a continuous spectrum—one of the Big Five personality traits . Hans Eysenck, building on Jung’s work in the 1950s, introduced a physiological perspective, suggesting that extraverts possess a...
Read more
-
Image
               How Geometry Revealed Quantum Memory                                 Mathematics, often dismissed in the secondary curriculum as a dry exercise in rote manipulation—arithmetic, elementary calculus, the perfunctory introduction to vectors and probabilities—rarely reveals its true profundity to the uninitiated. The pedagogical focus on computational facility, with only the occasional glimpse of proof or abstraction, fails to capture the labyrinthine depth and counterintuitive beauty that emerges when one transcends the confines of school mathematics. It is only upon immersion in higher mathematics that the edifice of one’s prior understanding collapses, exposing a terrain where logic and imagination entwine, and where the boundaries between mathematics and physics dissolve into a seamless continuum. The physics curriculum, by contrast, tantalizes young mi...
Read more