No purpose or place

Seeking purpose in a purposeless world

There’s an episode in the comic science fiction series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy where Deep Thought (an aptly named supercomputer) is asked the meaning of life. After 7 million years of computation and much anticipation, Deep Thought returns a concise and arbitrary answer of “42”. For those who had been patiently waiting, it was a deeply disappointing response to “the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything”.

It’s not only Deep Thought that has tried to answer this question, there are many philosophies and even more religions that offer their best guess to the reason for life — you can choose whatever sounds best.

Humans strive for meaning and while it’s unlikely (or at least there’s no evidence) that there’s a divine meaning to life, a concept that’s a lot easier to grapple with is, What’s our purpose in life? Now that’s a lot easier to understand. Or at least it was.

For most of human existence, our primary purpose on any given day was simple: survival (no different to any living organism today).

Back in our hunter-gather days there wouldn’t have been many choices on how to spend free time, what to have for lunch or selecting a career. Everyday life didn’t require too much thinking — it was clear what needed doing: find food, stay warm and try not to die.

While that doesn’t sound like much fun versus how we live today, Anna Lembke (psychiatrist and best-selling author) argues in an interview (below) that since life has become so much easier it has actually become tougher in a “really weird way”.  

I think that life for humans has always been hard, but now it's harder in unprecedented ways. And I think that the way that life is really hard now is that it’s actually really boring. And the reason that it's boring is because all of our survival needs are met.

I mean, we don't even have to leave our homes to meet every single physical need, you know, as long as you're of a certain level of financial wellbeing, which frankly, you know, we talk so much about, you know, the income gap, and certainly there is this enormous gap between rich and poor.

But that gap is smaller than it's ever been in like the history of humans. Even the poorest of the poor have more excess income to spend on leisure goods,
than they ever have before in human history.

So my point here is that life is hard now in this really weird way, in that we don't really have anything that we have to do.

So we're all forced to make stuff up, you know, whether it's being a scientist or being a doctor, or being an Olympic athlete, or, you know, climbing Mount Everest.

And people really vary in their need for friction. And some people need a lot more than others.

And if they don't have it, they're really, really unhappy.

The Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions have created a void in the human psyche. Now that our survival needs are taken care of — it’s not clear what we are waking up for so we need to invent a purpose which nearly always means finding a career. Our job becomes our main purpose in life.

The first question that nearly always crops up at a social gathering is, “What do you do?”. Oftentimes we identify as being our job, “I’m an accountant” or “I’m a hairdresser”. I think this is quite telling, in a world where we have to invent a purpose — we identify (or become) the thing we do.

We’re the middle children of history

In the film Fight Club there’s a scene where Tyler Durden says, “We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.”

What Tyler Durden and Anna Lembke are saying is essentially the same — we live in a time where there’s no driving force, no obvious reason for what we are supposed to be doing. We live in a time that’s comparable to a poorly run meeting with no agenda. Everyone is sitting there and thinking, Why am I here? and, What’s the point of this?

If you don’t love your job then you’re made to feel like something is wrong. It’s easy to become brainwashed by the proliferation of fake gurus who appear motivational but ultimately get our hopes up for no good reason. “Find a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” A big problem is that society doesn’t generate many interesting jobs — look for yourself on any job site — very few vacancies are jobs you’d feel lucky waking up for on a Monday morning.

I’m not saying no one enjoys their work — we all know someone who does, but I’m confident they’re the lucky few. Statistically speaking there's an overwhelmingly good chance you’ll end up doing a job you’re not passionate about.

When I look back to when I was stuck in an office, I’m convinced the unchallenging environment was what made it so unbearable; sitting at a desk, staring at a screen, going to meetings — it’s the same day after day. So how are we supposed to feel fulfilled and to have purpose when in all likelihood our work won’t do it for us?

Making life more challenging

Last week on a windy and rainy UK “summer’s day” I was feeling somewhat bored and downbeat. I had originally planned to go to the beach with my surfboard to practice some paddling, but the uninspiring weather was telling me to stay indoors. In the end, I pushed myself to go outside. It was what I expected — the sea was rough, it was windy and cold. I came out after 45 minutes, got showered using the cold shower by the public toilets and with a mild shiver got changed on the pebbled beach.

From when I was at home thinking about whether to go outside to being fully dressed after being in the ocean there was a stark contrast in my mood. I went from melancholic to energised and enthusiastic. If there was a pill that had this effect — everyone would take it. What I am describing isn’t anything groundbreaking or particularly interesting, I’m sure you’ve had experiences where your mood has improved after doing something or other.

Some of my improved mood can be explained by doing exercise but this only explains part of the picture — my “sea adventure” was a 3x, 4x or maybe 5x multiplier compared to when I go for a run. So what explains the incremental mood improvement?

I believe the reason is that we feel good (maybe even great) after doing something challenging. Living as a hunter-gatherer would have been tough, the more challenges we undertook the more we would have learnt, achieved and progressed. So it makes sense from an evolutionary perspective to be neurologically rewarded for undertaking experiences that push our boundaries. The problem most of us have today is that we rarely face real challenges. On the surface, it feels like an unchallenging and risk-free life would surely make us happy. But it doesn’t. It’s one of life’s paradoxes.

Rooftopping

Wu Yongning, a Chinese “rooftopper” who has since died after falling from a 62-storey skyscraper

Rooftopping is an activity that involves illegally scaling tall buildings (the taller the better) with no safety equipment. Losing your life is a not-too-uncommon occurrence. It’s a great example of how unchallenging everyday life has become and the extreme lengths humans go to to add “friction” to their lives. Free solo climbing, free diving, and wingsuit flying are just a few other examples of this. Before humans were able to take their survival for granted I doubt anyone gave much thought to how they could add danger and excitement to their lives for no good reason.

There’s a Netflix documentary called Skywalking about a couple who’ve made a career from rooftopping. If you’ve been putting something off because of fear or mild anxiety then I’d encourage you to watch it. It’s not going to make you want to start scaling buildings but if you’ve been putting off a dentist appointment (or anything else for that matter) it’s going to seem irrational in comparison.

Needless to say, we don’t need to be risking our lives to be enjoying ourselves. But I’m convinced that we all need to have something that makes us excited, and puts us into (as the psychologist, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes) a “flow state”.

What is that something though? That’s the million-dollar question.

Instead of asking for Deep Thought’s help, we can try asking the Japanese.

Ikigai

The Japanese believe we all have something that gives us a sense of purpose (a reason for living). They call this ikigai which roughly translates to a reason for being. If you have a job that you’re passionate about then you may already know what your ikigai is, maybe it’s teaching, helping others or producing artwork. Or maybe it’s something you do in your spare time like playing an instrument, gardening, or playing a favourite sport.

According to the book Ikigai: The Japanese secret to a long and happy life, “Our ikigai is hidden deep inside each of us, and finding it requires a patient search”. And if you don’t know what your ikigai is (many people don’t) “…then keep searching by going deeper into what you like by spending more of your time in the activities that make you flow. Also, try new things that are not on the list of what makes you flow but are similar and that you are curious about. For example, if photography is something that drives you into flow, you could also try painting; you might even like it more! Or if you love snowboarding and have never tried surfing … Flow is mysterious. It is like a muscle: the more you train it, the more you will flow, and the closer you will be to your ikigai.”

Trust fund kids

If living an unchallenging life brings joy then trust fund kids are the luckiest people on earth. From an early age, they know everything has been set for them — there’s no need to worry or exert much effort. Life is set. The thing is, humans have an innate desire for purpose. Much more than money.

If I try and imagine what living like a rich kid feels like — it doesn’t seem particularly appealing. I enjoy scrimping, saving and earning money — it gives me (and everyone else) a sense of accomplishment. Being born into tons of money would give you few challenges in life. Trust fund kids are on the extreme spectrum of purposeless living. It’s no surprise to me that substance abuse, anxiety and depression are all issues with children of affluence.

Many of us aspire to live like trust fund kids when we retire. We look forward to retirement age when our pension kicks it — now sit back, do nothing and spend money …“living the dream”.

After a certain amount of time, probably a few months and certainly less than a year, that retirement dream is over. Very few people can live like that because an unchallenging life is boring. A contrarian approach would be to retire with slightly less than you think you need so that you continue to be challenged, to have desire and purpose. I’ve recently been selling bits and bobs on eBay and claiming cash-back offers from banks which all feel somewhat satisfying. A feeling I wouldn’t have if I didn’t need to be doing it.

Living purposefully

Civilians being rescued from the grey-zone

Hell Jumper is an extraordinary BBC documentary about volunteers from all over the world who risk their lives in Ukraine by going to the frontline (with no military support) to save stranded civilians. Most of the documentary is told through first-hand video footage taken in incredibly perilous situations and from surviving volunteers.

After returning home from volunteering in Ukraine, Daniel, a carpenter from Canada says in one scene, “It’s kind of hard to care about…whatever, going for a bike ride or putting sod down in my yard. Like who really gives a shit about these things when I know that people are getting killed right now?” Other volunteers who speak in the film include Brogan, a retail worker from Scotland, and Christian, a personal trainer from the US. It’s evident through the director’s storytelling that the volunteers are heroes but at the same time doing this for themselves for a sense of purpose that’s most likely missing from home life.

It’s probably fair to say that many of us suffer from a lack of purpose, what the documentary film Hell Jumper demonstrates is how far some brave individuals are prepared to go to for resolving this.

Our mood, our emotions — all of the reasons we feel good and bad can be explained by our evolutionary past. I believe that undertaking challenges that provide a sense of accomplishment (and a degree of risk) is an essential ingredient for well-being based on how we lived thousands of years ago. If you don’t have a passion (an ikigai) then taking up whatever you feel is challenging will probably help by giving you a sense of achievement. Without being challenged, an easy life, one that’s analogous to sitting by the pool sipping cocktails — may sound nice but it’s purposeless and a surefire way to be unsatisfied.

Viktor Frankl, a well-renowned neurologist, psychologist, philosopher, Holocaust survivor and bestselling author said, “Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.”