Purpose

Mary Oliver’s line “Tell me, what are you planning to do with your one wild and precious life?” always inspires me to grab my pen. I enjoy reflecting on paper with loose morning pages or, best of all, writing from a poetry prompt, a single juicy line of poetry, in community.

"Imagine a sign far off in the future with a number on it that represents the age of your death. Every year you live, you advance closer to the sign. When you reach the sign, you die."

This is the title of our free upcoming online event with Father Richard Rohr, one of the best-known modern-day Christian mystics. Mark your calendars: May 31. Richard is based in New Mexico, so I've had the honor of becoming his friend. On multiple occasions, he's visited our Saddleback Ranch, which will be our first Santa Fe area campus.

Alfred Nobel had the rare experience of reading his own obituary, and what he saw deeply distressed him. A brilliant scientist, Nobel was a prodigious chemist and inventor. He was awarded hundreds of patents during his career, the most famous being for dynamite.

From my late 30’s to around age 50 I was very focused on having “success”. What I did not see was that this script was not really my own but one I inherited along with a few sharp edges.

You can’t have the noun if you don’t do the verb. In modern times, purpose has almost become a possession. We’ve all heard people say, “I can’t find my purpose,” as if it’s a handbag they left in the bathroom of a roadside gas station. We feel a bit naked if we don’t have a purpose, as if we’re the only ones without the “big P.”

I got to know my great-grandmother for a fraction of a second. My mom’s grandmother, Ethel, was a stately woman, a matriarch who believed that “children should be seen but not heard.” Honestly, I can’t say I remember a conversation with her. And then, poof, she was gone.

Ikigai. Joie de Vivre. Raison d'être. Why don’t Americans have concepts like these from the Japanese and the French? I liked the “joy of life” concept enough to name my boutique hotel company Joie de Vivre. And, both Ikigai and Raison d'être speak to why we jump out of bed each morning.

Let’s double click on Arthur Brooks’ recent column on “The Most Successful People are a Little Dissatisfied” since it has such applicability to the workshop that opens our Spring season.

The path of purposeful living is, ultimately, a spiritual journey. From birth onward, we are all getting older. But we are, hopefully, also growing whole – maturing spiritually.