Usefulness and Purpose

I've been struggling a lot again lately with purpose.

I don't even know why I'm even thinking so much about purpose.  Is it because I'm getting older? I didn't think about it in my twenties, not even in my thirties.  But for some reason it's almost on my mind daily in my forties.

It hit me after my Mom passed away.  Because after taking care of her for five years, I felt like I didn't really have a purpose after that.  If I didn't take care of my Mom for all those years, would I even be aware and struggling with this purpose thing?

After I started running the Omega Billiards Tour, I felt like I had purpose again.  Yay me!  But the purpose in life happy feeling slowly dwindled away for some reason.

After taking care of friend of mine (Dave) with mental and emotional support (still helping him), everyone told me that was purpose.  But what about when it ends?  For whatever reason I feel like I don't have a purpose in life.  And if you have purpose, that leads to have happiness, right?  It means you are making a difference in life, not just living a life.

It's actually been on my mind so much that it's pretty much been depressing me for quite some time. Paralyzing any sense of happiness.

I decided to finally look up on the all-knowing internet about purpose and happiness just to see what I would find. And fortunately for me one of the first few links I looked at was this link right here!

https://medium.com/art-of-practicality/the-purpose-of-life-is-not-happiness-its-usefulness-65064d0cdd59

After I read it, I was immediately overcome with calmness and happiness!

I honestly haven't been depressed since I read it about two weeks ago.  :)

It basically says that all the little things you do in life, add up.  And all those useful things add up, which leads to happiness and purpose.

And the examples he gave of being useful were very helpful things, but some also very small things. But if you think about putting all those things you do that are useful in one basket - it would be overflowing the top!

I also read somewhere else that if you make your purpose to cherish everyone you come across, then that brings you happiness which in turn brings you inner peace which in turn is a huge purpose, right?  Wishing for others to be happy all the time, how awesome is that?

So combine these two things I definitely feel much happier about not just living, but how I am living and what I'm doing in my life.

I also need to really, really remember that my job has a specific purpose to others. My job is basically customer service to people throughout the company across the entire country, but also what I do impacts the public directly (I work for the National Weather Service).  So I need to stop being so worrisome and confused about finding this magic purpose in my life when in reality I actually have a huge purpose right in front of me, here in my job (which takes up most of the time in my life, right?).

I'm so thankful that I've come to these realizations because I was being consumed with what my purpose in life is, which was leading to unhappiness (oh the irony).

So my purpose in life is to be useful; to be helpful; to be a great employee which in turn helps a lot of people.  It doesn't need to be ONE specific, huge, amazing purpose - but a whole basket of useful items!

All the useful things I do really DO add up.  Board member of the Coalition of Quality of End of Life Care, my job/career, city counsel meetings, certified mediator, coaching people in pool, and helping pool players improve through my pool blog, radio program, and online magazine.  And those are the big things - my basket runneth over even with all the little things I do daily that people don't see.

I need to STOP being so hard on myself.

I'm so much happier, I can't even describe it!   I'm just so very thankful I have came across Darius' article about usefulness and came to these realizations because I was struggling so deeply that it was almost paralyzing to even be happy everyday.

I knew I had a blessed, beautiful life.

Now I'm happy in it, reminding myself I don't need one big purpose and that I'm being useful with countless, untold different acts of kindness I do.  :)