The Question of Why
Have you ever asked the question “what is my purpose?” Think for a minute about starting a business. Whenever you decide to start a company, you first have to answer the question “why??” Why does this company exist? What are we here to do? This question provides the basis for a company’s “mission statement” – a statement which outlines the reason for the existence of the organization. It provides the answer to the question of why.
If you don’t have an answer to this question (and a good one at that), you may at some point find your business in an “existential crisis” – trying to figure out why the company should exist. Sometimes market factors demand that companies reevaluate their purpose. Sometimes companies stray from their initial purpose. And sometimes a company’s purpose is out of step with what people want – sometimes people don’t want a better mousetrap.
In movie terms, the answer to the question “why” is called “The MacGuffin.”
The MacGuffin is the object or device in a movie that drives the plot. Alfred Hitchcock popularized the term “MacGuffin” when he gave a lecture about his film The 39 Steps. He explains it:
“The MacGuffin is the thing that the spies are after, but the audience doesn’t care.”
George Lucas describes it as the main driving force of the movie, the object of everyone’s search. In Indiana Jones, it’s the Holy Grail or the Ark of the Covenant. In the Mission Impossible movies, it’s “The Rabbit’s Foot” or “The Noc List.” In Star Wars, it’s the Death Star Plans. In The Lord of the Rings, it’s the One Ring.
It’s the purpose for the story – the end that everyone is seeking. It’s what gives meaning to the narrative.
In Ancient Greece, the answer to the question “why” was called Telos. Aristotle said that telos was the inherent purpose of each thing – the ultimate reason for each thing being the way it is.
If you think of a coffee mug, for instance, everything about a coffee mug reveals its purpose as an object meant to facilitate the drinking of a hot beverage. The handle prevents your hand from being burned. The opening at the top is designed for easy drinking. It is made to contain a small amount of something – the right amount to drink. You wouldn’t use a coffee mug to carry gasoline to fill your car – too small. Now you could describe a coffee mug without referring to its design for facilitating the drinking of hot liquids, but you would be missing the most important thing about it – its inherent purpose, its telos.
Natural objects have a telos as well. Animals, plants all have a purpose, an end. According to Aristotle, their telos is what they do when they are fulfilling the purpose of their existence. When a tree grows, produces fruit, blooms, and reproduces, it is fulfilling its telos.
The telos provides meaning for something’s existence. The telos is the reason the thing is at all. It’s the answer to the question why. It’s the reason the company is in business. It’s the reason they spies are running all over Europe in the movie. It’s the reason for the coffee mug. It’s what gives meaning.
So with that in mind, here’s a question: What’s your telos?
What’s your reason for existing? In the same way a movie needs a point, in the same way a business needs a purpose, we have an inherent desire to find a reason for life.
A purpose directs you. A purpose provides meaning in the midst of the chaos of life. A purpose offers a foundation that you can stand on even when it seems the world is crumbling around you. A purpose clarifies your goals. A purpose narrows your focus. A purpose gives you an end to strive toward. Unfortunately, a lot of people have never figured out what their purpose in life is.
Finding Your Purpose
So, how do you figure out your purpose in life? I can’t answer that. As much as I’d like to give you five quick steps or 3 questions that will magically generate your life’s purpose, I think it’s more complicated than that.
Purpose has to do with the nature of being itself. It has to do with our beliefs and philosophies about life and existence. It’s not a simple matter to figure out your purpose, and you may never be able to come up with a definitive answer. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. So here’s a couple of guidelines for answering the question of why.
Find something bigger than yourself.
It’s too easy to say my purpose in life is to live a better life. Aristotle believed that happiness or Eudaimonia was the telos of the human being – that each person’s end was happiness. I don’t disagree that we all seek to be happy, but defining happiness is hard. We might think about substituting happiness with joy because we know all too well that life is suffering and there’s not much happiness in suffering. But maybe happiness isn’t the end. Maybe it’s meaning. Maybe it’s purpose.
Secondly, a selfish purpose is too easy, and from what I’ve seen about the complexity of life, the most comfortable choice isn’t always the answer. In fact, it’s almost always the wrong answer and as Ryan Holliday’s book states – The Obstacle is the Way. So find something bigger than yourself.
Find something you can believe in.
From what I’ve read about perception and faith, it’s of utmost importance that you find a purpose you can believe in. Again, it doesn’t so much matter what it is but that you can entirely get behind it with your whole will.
Inauthenticity will destroy you. When you lie to yourself, you do incredible damage to your psyche because one lie quickly leads to another and when we try to live for things that we don’t believe in, we ultimately end up not living with purpose, not living intentionally and not living authentically.
Authentic existence may be the absolute qualifier for a meaningful life. So, when you think about a purpose, make it something you can wholeheartedly believe in. Make it something you can get behind 100%. Make it so that you can live authentically and you don’t have to lie to yourself every day about following a purpose you don’t believe.
One philosophy that denies the idea that there is any purpose or meaning in life is Absurdism. It was popularized by Albert Camus, and he defined the absurd as the tension between our tendency as human beings to try and find meaning and purpose in life and our inability to do so. It’s absurd not because it’s logically impossible, but because, according to Camus, it’s humanly impossible for two reasons: (1) because there’s so much information out there that we could never sift through it all to find the ultimate meaning and (2) we can never know anything with complete certainty.
According to Camus, we should embrace the absurd – this conflict between our desire for significance and the cold, vast, distant universe which gives no answer to that desire. Well, embracing this, to me, is embracing nihilism. It is deciding to believe that life is meaningless. We need to remember, even as Camus himself stated, that the same conditions apply to both sides. The fact is we can’t know for sure whether life is meaningful or meaningless. Ultimately it comes down to a choice on what we believe about life – and that belief makes all the difference.
So choose to find something you can believe in, choose to believe that there are purpose and meaning in life, choose to believe that you can find significance in this world despite the obstacles that choice implies. It comes down to whether we think we are merely victims of a meaningless universe which operates against us without prejudice or whether we believe we have some autonomy and ability to make a difference with our lives and find meaning for existence.
Kierkegaard described this as a leap of faith. You can’t know for certain which one it is, but you have to make a choice one way or the other. And really, that choice makes all the difference.
Conclusion
I wonder why it is that at the deepest levels of our existence, as human beings we crave significance, purpose, and meaning. It’s an interesting thought. I don’t believe monkeys sit up at night and contemplate whether or not their lives in the jungle are making a difference in the greater world around them. This is a unique phenomenon among human beings. Martin Heidegger classified this as the nature of human being which he called Dasein. Basically, the unique nature of human Being (Dasein) is that its being is a concern for it. We care about our being. We think about it. We are concerned with it and its significance, its purpose, and its meaning.
I think back to a quote that CS Lewis gave which stated an obvious premise – “If I find myself in a world where I hunger for food I must believe that I was created to eat.” In the same sense we can suggest that if we find ourselves in a world where we long for meaning and purpose, we have to believe that we were created for a world where that can be fulfilled. So, choose to believe that, strive to find it and live it out.