I am stuck between thinking that life is ultimately absurd and therefore how I spend my time doesn’t matter; and a strong sense of destiny or pre-ordained purpose and therefore how I spend my time is critical.
I want to think that my life has a higher purpose, but at the same time I don’t want my life path to be pre-determined. I like to think I have a say in it all.
This leads to a lot of fear and worry over how I should spend my time. I have the luxury of spending it any way I want – make music, make art, start businesses, whatever strikes my fancy at the moment. I get lots of ideas on things I can do – I am never bored – but then there is this crushing fear that I need to focus down on just one or two things (because there is just not enough time in each day to do them all); and the fear is one of choosing the wrong things to focus my time on.
So what is the WRONG thing? The wrong thing is the thing that is ultimately fruitless or I would somehow regret later. The RIGHT thing is in line with some pre-ordained higher purpose.
I have always felt that life is a combination of free will and destiny. Free will on the little things that would not deter your true path (what to eat, jobs we choose, hobbies, cars and possessions), and destiny on the big things (the love of your life, children, and your true major purpose).
That is not to say that once I discover my true purpose that I should do nothing but that. Although there is a sense that if I knew what my purpose was, I could vector most of my time towards it and no longer worry that I was wasting my time on less important things.
I would like to spend my time in any way that I am compelled to spend it without fear that I am wasting my precious time on this earth. But sometimes that inner compelling is based in fear, not based on a connection with the river of my life.
Maybe the key is being able to discern where the compelling comes from. If I am compelled to start a business, why? fear of not having a traditional income? Or because I see a real need to connect people who are trying to connect but are having a hard time doing so? Maybe it’s both.
The music comes to me – it seeks me out to make it real and in doing so I feel ALIVE. But I do not always feel USEFUL – that is, useful to the larger community. Business ideas come to me to make them real and in doing so I feel USEFUL but I do not feel ALIVE.
Maybe I fear not being useful. Maybe if I am not useful, no one will care if I am here or not. Maybe I think that I have to be useful for my life to matter. Maybe as a child, If I was not being “useful”, or if I spent my time on “ frivolous activities” I would not get the love and acceptance I was seeking from my parents.
The reality is that I need to feel both ALIVE and USEFUL. Feeling PURPOSEFUL, I think, is a combination of alive and useful. And maybe it’s OK to get each part from separate things.
UPDATE: Re-posting this, I was reading it through and realized that I had indeed finally found my purpose! I feel alive and useful at the same time. I was dancing around it all the time – it’s not just music, not just writing, not just art; but all of it at the same time, towards the same end.
