Do You Need a Life Purpose to Be Happy?

Maybe there’s more to life than life purpose

I’ve been driven by a strong purpose during most decades of my life.

Setting out, I wanted to help others who were less fortunate than I. I worked as an employment counselor for the disadvantaged, and then as a director for a battered women’s shelter and rape crisis agency.

Eventually, I became the director of a spiritual organization. The community was small when I started, but a few years later, my spiritual teacher became a New York Times best-selling author. The popularity of his groundbreaking book made the organization’s membership grow wildly.

I thought we were helping people and making the world a better place. His book had helped countless individuals, especially those facing death and their caregivers. Its words touched masses more beyond those parameters — people seeking life meaning or looking for a new direction.

But the dream fell apart, for me and myriad others, when instances of alleged sexual, physical, and verbal abuse by our spiritual leader were revealed.

When Life Purpose Falls Apart

I’d already been slipping away from the organization for several years. Unwittingly, I had moved to the opposite end of the world, two oceans away and out of his physical reach. A disturbing illness, born from years of unrelenting stress under his thumb, made it impossible for me to travel to retreats at the time.

Although I lived far away in paradise, this teacher’s dominance and fear-inducing instructions still had a traumatic hold over me.

So, what about my life purpose?

During my unintended “vacation,” I attempted to heal my broken body while joining virtual retreats and continuing my daily spiritual practice. His behavior, even from afar, riled me. But I still held fiercely to the notion he was spiritually wise and attempting to dismantle his students’ egos through his radical behaviors.

But, as I heard more and more stories of degrading abuse and escalating violence, I could no longer hold to this starry-eyed view. Once the abuse was publicly revealed, I joined with others to ensure, as best we could, the revelations would not be swept under the rug as they had been in the past.

I wrote pieces for public blogs exploring what had happened and the question, “What now?” I co-moderated an online group for those who had been harmed. This wasn’t my life purpose, but it was something I needed to do.

When that phase came to a close, I wondered once again, “What is my life purpose?”

I had lost so much—my spiritual guide, my spiritual community, and to a great degree, my spiritual path.

I still believed in the basic tenets of Buddhism. But I no longer trusted its teachers or the system. The refusal of many teachers to stand up and speak the truth disturbed me. It sometimes stirred adverse reactions and traumatic responses from within my being.

My life purpose had been ripped away along with my innocent faith. Since I no longer worked due to health issues brought on by the stress and trauma I endured, I couldn’t make a job my life purpose.

I floated for years without a life purpose. Feeling I “should” have one, but not feeling an inner impulse towards a purpose.

Recently, I took an online course on healing from the empath-narcissist relationship. In case you’re wondering why, my teacher definitely possessed qualities associated with narcissism. The course leader believed a life purpose to be essential in recovering from an empath-narcissist relationship.

That made sense to me. The empath-narcissist relationship strips away an empath’s identity and sovereignty. Resetting yourself with a new life purpose or reclaiming one you’ve lost can give you a reason to live and a reason to heal once you’ve let go of the destructive relationship.

But still, I wondered:

• Is “life purpose” just the way we keep the illusion alive that there will be a happy ending — that things will come together in a good way and stay that way forever?
• Is it just a way to keep ourselves busy and distracted from the present moment?
• Is it just a way to make ourselves feel important, needed, useful?

As the Buddhist teacher Pema Chödrön has famously said in her book, When Things Fall Apart:

“Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.”

The truth is, life never fully stabilizes itself. So instead of grabbing onto a life purpose and making one’s existence all real, solid, and black and white, might there be another way?

I’ve had a number of intuitives tell me my life purpose over my last decade of purposelessness. Yes, I still asked, dogged by the idea I should have one. Their suggestions ranged from enjoying life to healing my emotional wounds to waking up spiritually.

Waking up might come closest to the truth for me. But I no longer had a guide or a clear path.

So, none of their suggestions felt like, “Yes, this is it. This is my new life purpose.” When it comes to life purpose, you have to feel something on the inside, don’t you?

Maybe I’m still too damaged from all the trauma, the loss, and the shattering of my beliefs and dreams.

But maybe I’m onto something too.

Maybe There’s More Than Life Purpose

When I awoke this morning, I felt satisfied to be alive. The sun was shining and the birds were chirping in full expression. I felt ready to see what would unfold in the next moment, and then in the next.

I felt tremendous gratitude for this precious now. I drank it in fully—the mix of natural sounds and the tenderness of the sun. I felt inclined to linger a little longer than usual in those glorious sensations, all well knowing they will pass too.

After his spiritual awakening, the spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle spent almost two years sitting on park benches in a state of joy, as explained in his book The Power of Now. He says a time came when he had no external identity — “no relationships, no job, no home, and so socially defined identity.”

What if losing our life purpose could be a positive outcome, even the best possible outcome?

After all, you lose your life purpose when you die. And you never know when that will be. It could happen sooner than you think.

There’s nothing permanent or lasting about one’s life purpose. If you manage to hold onto one for your entire life, it will dissolve at death too. Might it not be better to simply be present and aware to whatever unfolds next, instead of latched on unyieldingly to the transitory and mundane?

What would happen if, rather than organizing the world to suit the self, we stopped manipulating everything and instead just stayed present for our life?—Elizabeth Mattis Namgyel in The Power of An Open Question, The Buddha’s Path to Freedom

Please don’t get me wrong. If you have a clear life purpose, it may be very important, very noble, and not at all to be ignored. A positive life purpose can help you get outside of yourself. It can inspire you do something for the greater good.

Life purpose can be good, very good.

But don’t be so gripped by your life purpose that you entirely forget the beloved now. After all, one day your life purpose could fall apart—just like mine did.

And then what?

I haven’t suddenly awakened like Eckart Tolle. Although, I’ll admit, a part of me would love to sit in the present moment for unending amounts of time. But I felt an urge to write this piece and so I did, in one go.

What do you think? Is life purpose a necessary ingredient for a good life? Or is it enough to be here now? I would love to hear your thoughts.

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Originally published on alwayswellwithin.com

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