TIO Public Square
Discovering Life's Purpose
by Robert P. Sellers
Recently, I saved a quotation attributed to American author Mark Twain (1835-1910): “The two most important days in your life are the day you were born and the day you find out why.”
This statement has been credited to various people, some well-known and others not. But Twain is the most often cited source for the famous saying. A website called “Mark Twain Studies,” however, claims the quotation should not be associated with the 19th-century writer and humorist. But the website does admit that this quotation is the most popular item in the “Twain apocrypha.” It is greatly admired and often repeated, illustrated by data the study center provides:
In just the hour prior to this writing, the quote appeared in seven independent Facebook posts. It has been tweeted by over 900 separate accounts, reaching over 5.2 million users, in the past twelve days. Antoine Fuqua made it the epitaph to his 2014 action film, The Equalizer, starring Denzel Washington, which grossed nearly $200 million worldwide. Perhaps appropriately, in a year which has officially been deemed post-truth, the most frequently encountered example of Twain’s notorious wit is something he most certainly never said.
Yet, not knowing the identity of the one who originated this profound insight does not detract from its beauty or meaning, for it concerns the journey one makes to self-discovery and life purpose.
The Journey to Become
The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions defines “pilgrimage,” or spiritual journey, as “[t]he literal or metaphorical movement to a condition or place of holiness or healing. But interestingly, the journey to become is not only a pilgrimage that promises spiritual reward, personal transformation, or encounter with holiness. It is also recognized as crucial for corporate success. The founder of the HuffPost, Arianna Huffington, launched a company called Thrive Global, dedicated to helping employees around the world to reduce stress and improve wellness. The entrepreneurial Huffington says that “More and more companies are realizing that there is a fundamental connection between their employees’ well-being and the bottom line. The goal really is to end the delusion that in order to succeed you have to burn out.” In one of Thrive Global’s publications, psychotherapist Easton Hamilton authored an article titled “The Journey of Becoming: A Map for Change.”
Hamilton explains:
[The Journey of Becoming] is a truly fascinating subject because it tells the story of how we become who we are. We are the result of a journey from “behavior to nature” – a journey that begins with seemingly innocent and what may appear inconsequential actions and yet ends up creating patterns that become incredible forces of nature. … [Our] behaviors are like sowing seeds in the fields of infinite possibility and [our] nature is [the] fruit that those seeds eventually bear.
Easton is talking about how our choices and behaviors – good, bad, or neutral – through repetition will become patterns or traits. These traits produce powerful contours to our personality, which then create our character and ultimately shape the nature of our lives. This process is an unconscious one, but when we look back upon it at a particularly reflective time in our lives, it is possible to see the way random circumstances, or our personal choices, or perhaps the prodding of Divine providence, have helped to form us.
At the moments when we are traversing the mountains, valleys, switchbacks, straight stretches, rough places, and smooth trails we cannot always see how those separate experiences will together comprise the journey which leads to our becoming. That adventurous process was described by Sam Keen, noted author, professor, and philosopher, who contended that
“Foggy Ship” Photo by Filip Mroz on Unsplash
The spiral journey may be the best metaphor for the spiritual life because we seem to discover what we have always known and forgotten. Gradually, we re-collect the fragments of our soul, which was “long ago and far away” single and whole. Everything happens as if we were moved by an unconscious vision, or a pre-conscious knowledge, that we are citizens within a sacred cosmos.
This pilgrimage of discovery takes a long time – maybe as long as a lifetime – and even then, we likely will not have uncovered all of the Mystery. Thus, Keen suggested:
[We] will be disappointed if [we] expect that a spiritual quest will lead to a certainty and possession of the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Doubt and dialogue will always be with us. It is not necessary for us to find definitive answers to the unanswerable questions: Why are we here? Where do we come from? Where are we going? And how should we act in the meantime? But we do need to face into the wind and keep the great questions alive. It makes all the difference whether we remain open in wonder to the true mystery or surrender our discrimination and settle for the false religious mystifications of cult and tribe.
Facing into the wind requires strength and resolve. Douglas Wood, children’s author of the celebrated Old Turtle books and a naturalist often referred to as a “renaissance man,” describes the way jack pines of the North Woods along the Minnesota-Ontario border exhibit this power:
Jack pines . . . are not lumber trees [and they] won’t win many beauty contests either. But to me this valiant old tree, solitary on its own rocky point, is as beautiful as a living thing can be. … In the calligraphy of its shape against the sky is written strength of character and perseverance, survival of wind, drought, cold, heat, disease . . . In its silence it speaks of . . . wholeness … an integrity that comes from being what you are.
These sturdy trees are figuratively used by Parker Palmer, the respected teacher and activist, to reflect upon human wholeness. He writes:
Thomas Merton claimed that “there is in all things … a hidden wholeness”, quoted in Parker Palmer, A Hidden Wholeness. But back in the human world – where we are less self-revealing than jack pines – Merton’s words can, at times, sound like wishful thinking. Afraid that our inner light will be extinguished or our inner darkness exposed, we hide our true identities from each other. In the process, we become separated from our own souls. We end up living divided lives, so far removed from the truth we hold within that we cannot know the “integrity that comes from being what [we] are.”
“The integrity that comes from being what we are” – this phrase resonates strongly with me, because of the sermon my father preached in the Christian ceremony 54 years ago when I was set apart and “ordained” to fulfill my pastoral calling in life. “The Word is Integrity” was the title of his challenge, and I have not forgotten that this faithful man of the people, my dad who so greatly influenced my life, offered this one word of admonition to his son as I prepared to launch into my career as a young minister.
In my studies of New Testament theology, I learned that Jesus’s beatitude in the Sermon on the Mount, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God” (Mt 5:8), concerns integrity, or wholeness. Those who are not blessed are the ones who hide their true identities, who wear masks, who are two-faced, duplicitous, deceitful and false. On the other hand, the blessed are people who have integrity, who are not afraid to reveal themselves to others, whose lives exhibit a consistency between word and deed, whose walk matches their talk, who are whole and not fractured.
Palmer emphasizes that the “word [‘integrity’] means much more than adherence to a moral code: it means ‘the state or quality of being entire, complete, and unbroken,’ as in integer or integral. Deeper still, integrity refers to something – such as a jack pine or the human self – in its ‘unimpaired, unadulterated, or genuine state.’” When we understand integrity for what it is, we stop obsessing over codes of conduct and embark on the more demanding journey toward being whole.”
That wholeness, suggests British academic Philip Sheldrake, signals an undeniable link between one’s identity, memory and place. He says,
The concept of place refers not simply to geographical location but to a dialectical relationship between environment and human narrative. Place is space that has the capacity to be remembered and to evoke what is most precious. … Because of this, the human sense of place is a critical theological and spiritual issue.
It is not simply a matter of recognizing the space we occupy, but of understanding why certain places are life-shaping. There is a difference between space and place, as Old Testament professor and author, Walter Brueggemann, clarifies:
Place is space which has historical meanings, where some things have happened which are not remembered [but] which provide continuity and identity across generations. Place is space in which important words have been spoken which have established identity, defined vocation and envisioned destiny. Place is space in which vows have been exchanged, promises have been made, and demands have been issued. Place is indeed a protest against an unpromising pursuit of space. It is a declaration that our humanness cannot be found in escape, detachment, absence of commitment, and undefined freedom. Whereas pursuit of space may be a flight from history, a yearning for a place is a decision to enter history with an identifiable people in an identifiable pilgrimage.
Conclusion
I know my life journey has led me to many significant places – both actual and imaginary. Those places have historical meaning for me, and while not every space I have occupied is worth remembering, there have been many places that collectively provided continuity for me across the decades. In those places, important words were spoken which established my identity, defined my vocation, and envisioned my destiny. The places along my journey were where vows were exchanged and promises made. These places became the stuff of pilgrimage.
And it was this pilgrimage – leading me to and through many significant places around the world – which helped me to discover why I was born. I began my career as a youth minister, and my identity became my title in churches where I served in the U.S. Then Janie and I were appointed to be missionaries in Indonesia. There, the mission agency for which we worked designated me as a youth evangelist. During our first furlough back in the U.S., I was invited to give the keynote sermon at the Florida State Youth Evangelism Conference in Tampa. It was very clear to me that “youth evangelist” was not the identity which connected with my soul. However, when I became a theological teacher in Jakarta in 1983, I discovered my calling: I was born to be a teacher.
Many famous people have discovered their identity and calling “mid-stream.” Before he became a globally-known comedian, Ken Jeong was a practicing physician. Vera Wang worked very hard to become a professional ice skater until she discovered fashion design. Harrison Ford was an accomplished carpenter until he first tried acting. Julia Child worked in secret intelligence (OSS) before discovering her calling as a celebrity chef. I have no doubt each of these people would look back at their lives with gratitude that they ultimately discovered their life purpose.
Perhaps you have also been on pilgrimage in your life. You may not have understood your journey through time and location as a pilgrimage. Nor have you considered the crooks and turns of your life, leading you to different places around the globe, as a “map of your soul.” Nonetheless, if you look back upon your life, perhaps you will see a pattern, a trajectory which makes perfect sense to you now. Maybe, like so many others, you have discovered along the winding pathway what you know is your life purpose.
I was born in 1945, and while that is an important fact about me, even more significant is my much later discovery that I was born to be a teacher.
