Why Not Quit?, An Introduction on Purpose

WHY NOT QUIT? An Introduction on Purpose

2004 Power of Purpose prose competition A personal reflection
3,021 words

by Stephen S. Sawyer

To the utter amazement of some and hysterical ambivalence of others, death invariably triumphs. Those remaining above ground usually plunder the unconsumed wealth like marauding hyenas, devouring and tugging at a recently deceased zebra whose unflinching eye calmly retains the look of surprise. On that unbearably hot and bloody ground the timeless laws of nature once again reflect the predictable behavior of those who take to survive. And while many humans struggle against these seductive lures there are others, rare and few, who simply ignore or openly defy these apparent commandments of natural law. They conduct their lives dispensing kindness and assisting others wholly undeterred by the voracious appetites of the ‘takers’. Repulsed by even the slightest notion of being a spiritual scavenger, survival to these extraordinary few is literally dependant upon giving. Unlike the takers, men and women living with honorable purpose, unfailingly and steadfastly advance in their environment using death as a mere timeline to impregnate others with the seeds of their willful acts of loving service.

Flying in the face of natural law their deeds are routinely enacted on purpose rather than by chance. Is it possible this ability to defy the animal indolence, woven within the fabric our species, is somehow not available to everyone? Doesn’t everybody want to be a conduit and catalyst for good? This level of purposeful giving is transcendent and goes far beyond the benevolence which is merely indicative of good manners. In fact, this profound kindness is so superior to polite behavior that I only attribute its palpable reality to an unseen spiritual presence.

While there are countless people who gratefully receive this intentional kindness there are still others who treat charity and mercy like a suspicious disease causing weakness in mind and body. They approach ‘givers’ like Central Park pigeons fluttering and strutting in for a free meal. And while outwardly unafraid of the giver they show little desire to have a relationship with them.

I’ve known a man, in his seventies, who has stopped by my office and deliberately or deviously asked me for money, for over ten years. With a myriad of real and imaginary problems, he misread my kindness and occasional gifts for weakness. In return I misread his friendliness for a potential relationship. As he would enter my office, oblivious to my work or guests, I couldn’t help but wonder about his purpose in life. I offered time, coffee, car rides and an occasional meal until I learned that I was just another stop on his daily route. Little does he comprehend the years he wasted plying others out of little more than breakfast cash appears to be his chosen purpose in life. My reactions have been compassionate and confrontational. I have cautioned him repeatedly about the repercussions of taking. Over the years he modified his taking techniques by occasionally offering small gifts to me or my family. They were mostly cookies or candy given to him, that he didn’t want, but they were still gifts. I know this is some kind of progress but it still feels like a conditioned response.

“At least he gives to take” I tell myself, but something in his eyes looks like the caged chicken, who awkwardly taps on the keys of a child’s tiny piano for food. What event might open his eyes and allow him to grasp the freedom and joy of giving without selfish motivation? How and when did he get lost in this numbed sense of entitlement? In my best effort to raise the standards of this lopsided relationship I stopped giving him money.

His drastically reduced visits suggest how difficult it must be to change and to advance his purpose in life beyond the habitual routine of taking. The day my friend returns and takes out the trash or does anything, asking for nothing in return, is a day I truly desire for him. It would be his best day yet. I don’t know what else I can to do to help it transpire. As I struggled repeatedly to tell his story without demeaning him, writing and rewriting the synopsis of our relationship and how the power of purpose is enmeshed, I realized his progress and mine are inseparable.

That dignity of purpose must be restored in the lives of those with misguided hope and complicated love because the favorable future of humanity surely hinges on our ability to demonstrate, through living example, this singularly compelling truth; that despite any appearances to the contrary, we were created to give, not take.

The power of purpose will never reach its manifest destiny until we individually understand power and purpose. A thesaurus lists over two hundred words benign or neutral about power and purpose. Power has only three words; oppression, despotism, and tyranny which are negative. Purpose has only one phrase which must be negative; ‘in cold blood’. Yet how many of us have assigned negative values to these profound concepts. He/she hurt them on purpose. He/she abused their power. I’ve been misled too often regarding the potential righteousness of power and purpose and failed to see through the negative veils so often broadcast in our entertainment, news, and recorded history. Unless we unfurl these words like a majestic flag, to which we pledge our allegiance, we might easily harbor grudges against these ideals of human behavior.

Knowing humans invariably seek that which they don’t possess, great teachers have fished for the souls of men and women using this knowledge as a lure. The teacher’s responsibility is to slowly guide pupils through the maze from selfishness to selflessness. Like astonished rats following nothing but the smell of cheese many have found the prize was not the cheese but the mysterious wind that carried its smell. Like a tasteless, colorless, and odorless gas, recognition of this wind forever changes life. The winds of this spirit can be seen guiding the hearts and minds of some, while we tragically witness its presence ignored or suffocated in others. What allows some people to embrace and utilize this invisible gas? It is clearly oxygen for some and poison to others.

Even with the wisdom of ancient texts worldwide we don’t have the means to fully comprehend and speculate the probable outcome of our planet should this benign spirit’s purpose and power be harnessed to its full potential. Recognizing and mobilizing purpose in life has no precedence outside humanity. As self-conscious animals it seems our unique foreknowledge of death makes us behave in unpredictable and unusual ways.

We can watch live telecasts any time of day, via remarkable satellite images, showing us children clawing through mountainous dumps for scraps of food, broken toys, and discarded but re-sellable items. One channel away we see the lives of the rich and famous filled with the transient joys of being immersed in luxury and physical sensuality. The purity of purpose, it seems, is easily distracted. What is purpose? Is it in the aching heart of a restless being struggling to find a reason to live each day? Does the driving influence for affluence confer purpose upon a human being?

Each of us makes hundreds of decisions a day. Beneath these choices is revealed our chosen purpose in life. We should also consider that purpose is an ideal whose beauty, in conjunction with love, must be protected. Without a foundationally incorruptible definition, love would become the accomplice of misguided purpose. Under such circumstances both precious vessels are cast adrift as rudderless ships on the sea of life, seeking comfort from whatever glittering distant harbors they may chance upon.

The great teachers and emancipators have never used “easy living” or “material prosperity” as a lure for spiritual progress.

Who asks God to “Give us this day our daily problems”? Reality demonstrates that there is no escaping them. Perhaps our ability and willingness to learn grace and tolerance from our struggles would be far more successful if we preferred and accepted our problems as “gifts” rather than fearfully recoiling from them as plagues acquired by chance.

Mercy, forgiveness, courage, humor, charity, and love are some of our most precious experiential possessions but none of them can become enduring steel without sometime being forged between the hammers of suffering and the anvil of fear.

Destiny is not just for mortals, it also exists for concepts. What is the destiny of “purpose”? In a world checkered with love and hate coexisting for untold millennium every generation speculates on the outcome of good vs. evil. With no world-wide agreement on the definitions of right and wrong, hope for progress seems fragile at best. As we witness the slaughter and extinction of plant and animal species what would become of us if realities like love, hope and purpose vanished from the foundations of our thoughts?

We constantly hear about cities and villages under attack all over the world. Terrified men and women flee across hopeless landscapes with their families in search of safety. All too often the men are murdered, women raped, and children beaten. Where is their purpose? We watch tiny children with fly infested eyes collapse and die from hunger. What is their purpose? We have repeatedly witnessed the potential wealth of thousands wrongly entrusted into the hands of a few. What can be their purpose? If we know about the despair of others and shrug it off, what is our purpose?

If the hands of the “divine ether” were lifted, civilization would momentarily stagger drunken with self pride and ultimately turn upon itself with stones, sticks, and clubs.
Can we save “purpose” from extinction by deliberately serving others? Would dinosaurs still be here if they possessed that particular character of purpose? No matter how big, complex, or apparently smart dinosaurs became, they still lived life like a glorified amoeba. Purpose with service gives life the ultimate survival quality. Regardless of theoretical meteors or other worldwide disasters, dinosaurs would eventually become extinct because they weren’t smart enough or kind enough not to eat or kill for the last remnant of food. Humans presuming to be vastly superior have been known to kill one another for a pair of sneakers. What is our purpose? Can giving instead of taking prevent our own extinction?

Our very finest secular morality is powerless to transform average lives into extraordinary lives even when inspired by charity, hope, and love. Secular thought can mandate extraordinary reason but never extraordinary purpose. Reason can never acquire purpose until it is immersed in compassion. Secular values are built upon the pillars of logic and observation. Humans with purpose can defy that very logic. Those mortals overflowing with secular goodness may stop when it begins to hurt but mortals with spiritual purpose always serve others even at their own loss.

Self-centered people seem to end life like the leaves of autumn. No matter how glorious their color they still fall to the ground, slowly wither and blow away as indiscernible fragments in the wind. The lives of those who serve others end like fertile seeds. And the true purpose of those seeds is the ongoing service demonstrated after its death. The liberating unclaimed potential power from the seeds of purpose is to love and serve others as God loves and serves us. To deny our true self of that destiny is to sacrifice the spirit of the living God that dwells within our bodies. Refused permission to breathe through the nostrils of any such mortal, the Creator has forever lost that unique expression of life.

In our world of hope and sorrow there are two major stories continually told over time. One story is that of greed and fear in such horrific proportions that it moves the rudder of humanity. The other is about purpose founded in love, forgiveness, hope, and service and these too move the rudder of humanity. While it may appear that the knotted angry people, masquerading in the habiliments of civilization, are holding the wheel and steering the course of humanity and determining the destiny of purpose, they are not. Such people assault but the visible facade of an oncoming glacier of such immense scale and purpose that it goes beyond any imaginable horizon of time and space. Real purpose can be delayed but never stopped. Mankind’s worst is but fertilizer in the presence of mankind’s best. Real purpose turns the stench of mankind into the rich and creative soil from which the fragrant rose blooms, thorns and all.

Real purpose becomes part of the fabric of humanity when it is interwoven with love. Therefore it behooves us to demand an understanding of love that is unquestionably superior to selfish sensuality. If not, purpose becomes no more effective than desire.

Throughout recorded time and beyond there are men and women who have made passionate contributions with their lives and slowly moved the rudder of humanity to the bearing of true north. What these women and men have done with their lives is simple yet profound. They volunteer their lives as an assignment of serving others beyond the boundaries of personal comfort and loss. They have become intoxicated by the fragrant vapors of a God who expects no less and gives no less. They wrestle and plunge into the flowers of life sprouted from the festering guano of humanity’s worst and willingly become overwhelmed with the passion of creating honey wherever they go. These humans of super-mortal purpose love others more than they are loved, serve more than they are served, and give more than they receive. They experience the exalted privilege of sincere giving and therefore become the proper embodiment of free will. In voluntary submission to loving service, the desire to do good to others, becomes the defining attribute of love that carries the power of purpose ever and anon to its glorious destiny.

These magnificent beings are no different from us except by their choices. Their color does not guarantee them a life of purpose. Neither does their religion, gender, age, or success render them with purpose. No one knows why one person surrenders to love while others surrender to hate. Sadly we must acknowledge that our laws, spiritual and secular, define what we are not as much as what we must strive to be.

It is always those who must first “count the cost” of loving, when considering a life of purpose, that merely follow reason and logically stop when it hurts. The men and women of loyal principles and purpose intuitively know “true north” and live unafraid of their personal cost for the progress of mankind.

It is again interesting to observe the opposite of “on purpose” is “by chance”. People of purpose do not wait for this wind to accidentally blow in their direction. They know the sail must be tight, the rudder set, and the compass needle free to always point to true north. They deliberately choose to help guide this ship of life, disgruntled passengers and all, into the safe harbors of progress, made possible by the storms of change.

People with purpose watch lawmakers and lawbreakers dance in a delirious deadlock of ever-increasing punishments visited upon the lives of those who take from others. All the while humans with real purpose do right and live right with no apparent effort.

People with purpose don’t leave life up to chance. They inherently know but can’t always explain how love, hope, compassion, forgiveness, and purpose have a powerful destiny that must be safeguarded with their very lives.

Once women and men enter into these fragrant intoxicating vapors of God they long to lift those beneath them that they too may chance to smell this heavenly aroma. They know their proximity with the divine is determined by this service. These enlightened ones do not judge and neither do they defend themselves from those who insist that these tasteless and odorless vapors, which cannot be proven, do not exist.

Deity has becomes their breath. Service has become their food. Purpose has become their tranquility in an uncertain life. They are powerfully living in a world gone mad with rules of engagement and laws built upon the traditions of time-modified morality.

Real purpose is the love dominated center from which all unselfish decisions are made. That same purpose is recognized as the voluntary, unselfish service one renders to others and therefore to God. Real purpose lives in the hearts and minds of men and women who live for a greater purpose. Real purpose, in the life of each willing person, is a small indestructible fragment of a grander purpose that permeates the universe as a whole. In fact, the contributions these people provide are the mortal portion of the fabric of eternity.

If you have thus participated in life by choice and not by chance, you have purpose and the world knows it. Your name and face may or may not be remembered or honored but the impact of your life is forever implanted in the soil of destiny.

Ultimately one must decide for themselves whether life itself exists on purpose or by chance. And growing out of this same free-will decision reveals the heart of a person who will grow and collectively manifest the choices that once again affect the rudder of humanity.

I know enough about these magnificent humans that I want to become one of them.

I know I want to spend my life making a difference in the outcome of our world on purpose.

I know accidental progress in mind, body, and spirit is not acceptable.

I know that no contribution is too small.

I know this lifestyle I have chosen is, in fact, the birth of my eternal career.

I know the choices I make, day by day, will determine not only my progress but the progress of those I serve.

I know loving service can be rendered in any secular job.

I know God is real.

This concludes my introduction on the Power of Purpose.

The following submission is my personal reflection.

THERE IS NO PURPOSE WITHOUT SERVICE. THERE IS NO POWER WITHOUT LOVE. THE POWER OF PURPOSE IS LOVING SERVICE.

09-10-2010

Since Jan 1^st, 2000

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