Finding Purpose & Rhythm

Depression compelled me to seek help in the form of a retreat. My art career pursuits were leaving me unfulfilled and unmotivated for life, so I brought my sketchbook deep into a Georgian forest in search of clarity and confidence.

In-between encounters with beautiful people, I heard that the hostel manager was offering palm readings and that she was very good. Having had an experience with a psychic before who was very bad, I decided to give her a shot with an open mind.

Putting my sketchbook in my bag, I went into the reading, her eyes penetrated into mine while she held my hands, measuring lengths of my fingers, feelings the strength and limberness of various features, all while speaking. It was shocking how she knew me, while I had never met her before. I felt so exposed. Some of her statements were so on point, so personal, and I was so in need of hearing them, that at multiple points I almost burst into tears.

While I did not ask her any specific questions, in the middle of the reading, she said I was a creative and artistic person captivated by beauty… but that pursuing an art career would only be a struggle for me. She went on to say that while that was the case, that I had an unconventional mind and actually had a gift for math and physics.

When the reading ended, I wrote what she had said into my sketchbook, and that part stuck in my head like something that didn’t sit well.

“Ugh. Math and physics… Why?”

Years of Trying

Years ago on the cusp of adulthood, I had decided to be artist. It felt like the right thing to do. Making art is fun; why not make a career of it?

I had tried so many different kinds of creative disciplines:

• illustration
• graphic design
• web design
• event planning
• animation
• landscape design
• alternative healing
• painting

No matter what I tried, I could never seem to summon the motivation to do any discipline on a consistent basis. Once I figured out the fundamentals of how it worked, I’d move on.

It seemed like what drives me was not a desire to express the vision of others. I grew bored of marketing once I understood it, and I couldn’t stand being in the position of having a client expecting design work from me and wanting reiterations.

What drives me was not even a desire to express myself artistically. I sat down and painted everyday, but I grew to hate these paintings and had no motivation to finish them.

I tried enforcing consistency and routine:

• I tried keeping a record of what I would work on every day — a log of progress with future goals to work towards.
• I tried habit-forming apps.
• I tried the schedule of commiting to just 20 minutes of creativity every day — just long enough to get into the flow state — or short enough to abort and do something else if I just wasn’t feeling it.

I was never feeling it.

I read many articles on how to become a professional artist and on how to improve at art. The universal advice in these articles was terrible, always a focus on: “Whatever you do, don’t give up.”

Giving up from a place of defeatism, is one thing, but sometimes letting go is exactly what is needed.

“Draw everyday” was also terrible advice. Drawing everyday will make you better at drawing, this is true. But it might also make you hate drawing and yourself.

People who like drawing naturally draw almost everyday, and so don’t need that advice. They are probably already professional artists.

People who don’t draw everyday either want to draw everyday but fail to prioritize it, or they don’t want to draw everyday but don’t want to admit it. Most advice targets the first case. The belief here is that the only thing separating a person from a goal is sheer force of will and discipline.

The difference here is subtle but very important. Successful professional artists are happy making art everday. Unsuccessful artists are unhappy making art everyday, but hope that one day, when they eventually are rewarded success, they will be happy.

If you are unhappy being an unsuccessful artist, then gaining success won’t make you happy. If anything, success brings obligation and more pressure, things that you will be crushed under if you don’t actually enjoy the work.

Looking back at the drawings I made from the retreat, I can feel how they came less from a place of enthusiasm and more from a place of obligation. Feeling like I needed to get better. My sketchbook had become my anchor tethering me to guilt when I would inevitably fail to put any sketches in it. It wasn’t my natural disposition to draw all the time, and no amount of discipline was going to change that.

Looking back, the connecting thread that does motivate me, seems to be solving problems, researching, and exploring mysteries. It was this that motivated to try all of these disciplines in the first place, and it’s the very same drive that kept me from being able to commit to any single one of them once I understood them.

Finding Fun in Roadblocks

Success isn’t the promise of being happy in the future, but feeling joy in your actions on a daily ongoing basis.

Much of working life involves overcoming roadblocks. It’s only a question of which roadbloacks do you enjoy helping others overcome? People will pay you for helping them overcome roadblocks, and they’ll pay you in proportion to how good you are at it. The more you enjoy it, the better you’ll get at it, the more money you’ll make.

Most people focus on the positives when considering career paths: the fun parts. But I find it much more useful to consider the negatives of a potential career, and ask yourself if you could find joy in that.

It sounds fun to make games, but could you enjoy spending the bulk of your time debugging code that you've already written?

It sounds fun to grow food for your family and town, but could you enjoy spending the bulk of your time doing physical labor, dealing with problems like pests, diseases, and drought?

It sounds fun to create recipes for restaurants, but could you enjoy delegating solutions to problems in a high-stress environment, like the kitchen running out of an essential ingredient in the middle of a rush?

All work has positives and negatives. Rather than solely focusing on what work you enjoy, focus on what work you would enjoy for the very reasons that many other people wouldn’t enjoy it.

What roadblocks do you enjoy overcoming? What kinds of stress give you a sense of fulfillment?

Purposeful Process

Despite deciding for art to be my purpose, and trying to adapt myself to it in every way I could think of, at the core of my being, it was wrong for me.

I’m not making the same mistake of declaring a new purpose, because life is not knowing the end. Purpose is not a definition, but a process.

You have no purpose alone. Purpose is the process of relating to others and giving to them.

Every person comes here with gifts to be shared, but I’m beginning to think that each person’s gifts may be as unique as their DNA. You will find rhythm in a unique blend of actions and relationships that will refine you over time, as long as you remain open, adaptable, and attuned to your heart.

Without definition, without the need for self-validation, what do you want to give?

Math and Beauty

When the psychic suggested that I may have a gift for math, my heart sunk.

Math had always come easy to be growing up, and I exceeded grade-levels, being taught algebra in third grade, but my desire to learn math came to an adrupt halt when I was entered in a math competition at the end of elementary school. My team and I couldn’t solve any of the problems nearly fast enough, and so we ended up just waiting for it to be over. It was humiliating.

I didn’t want to learn math because I grew to see it as most high schoolers do: boring, irrelevant, and needlessly difficult. I wanted to do what others would admire. I wanted to make beautiful things, and math did not seem beautiful at all.

Now, the more I explore, the more I see how math does contain beauty… it’s harder to see, but beautiful in it’s symmetry and complexity. Math doesn’t reveal herself to anyone all at once, but only parts of her, and slowly, over time, to those who court her.

Relief

I was so locked into tunnel-vision stubbornness that I didn’t want to consider the psychic’s suggestion, but once I did, once I let go of art, I felt liberated. I still draw, but not nearly enough to constitute a full-time job, and I accept that.

Within a month after the retreat, I applied and was accepted to a university, majoring in physics. It was the same university where I applied and was accepted to six years ago before I changed my mind to forgo college to explore vague ideas of making art and starting a business.

I didn’t go to college because I didn’t want to make the mistake of choosing a career that wouldn’t make me happy, but in isolating myself to art, that’s exactly what I was doing: living in present unhappiness for the promise of happiness in the future.

At first I felt silly, embarrassed for having made the mistake of not attending the first time… but six years has made me a very different person. I’m not going to university in order to prove something, or to get it over with, but to the contrary: I could not be more excited for the experience, community, and resources.

Tuition being over $40,000 for the year, I somehow managed to qualify for enough scholarships and financial aid that I didn’t need to take out any loans. This change in direction has brought tremendous relief, and everything seems to be falling into place.

In these waning days of summer before I start classes next month, I fill my free time with math, of all things. I put aside my sketchbook in exchange for a notebook and calculator. When people see me doing math, they ask me if it’s homework. It’s like people assume that I couldn’t possibly doing math for fun. ;-)

It is surprising to me still, everyday, that I find math problems so fun. How was that psychic able to see something about myself that I couldn’t?

Becoming Nature

Purpose is not a definition, but a feeling, a general direction. It’s important to remain open and unencumbered by your own preconceived notions about who you are and what you’re here to do. I started this year sure of the fact that I was not a mathematically-minded person, that I was not cut out for science fields, and that I didn’t like academia.

In letting go, all these preconceived notions flew out the window.

It feels like… becoming nature. The forces of nature around us consistently operate from a place of wisdom despite our ignorance of how these forces scientifically work. I can’t communicate how this works, and many Eastern mystics have attested that such truths are beyond words. But what I can say is that life is better lived in the flow of this force than against it. You always have the choice in action between what is natural and what is unnatural.

The distinction of what is natural for me, doesn’t feel like a choice. The only choice is to accept what is and flow with that truth… or not — and accept the consequences either way. It is a choice made in every present moment.

Fear wants you to have a clearly defined destination. Fear wants reassurances, rationalized explanations, proof.

Maybe the only constant is change. Maybe your purpose can’t stand to be caged anymore than you would. Maybe the very narrowing rationalizations that serve to placate our fears simultaneously dampens a spirit that is fearless in it’s expansion.

Becoming nature feels like getting out of my own way.

You want to find your purpose? Stop looking for it. Let it introduce itself to you, let it change you, and let it both confirm and disprove everything you’ve ever thought about yourself.

I’m not trying anymore, and yet making more progress than ever. I’m letting myself be as I am, while accepting that I don’t know what that is. It’s so difficult to accept how easy it is. In moments of blissful clarity, I remember completeness. It’s when I forget that I feel fearful and separate.

What do you do when you feel complete? I’m sure whatever it is, it’s a force of nature to behold.