Satisfaction

The Price of Getting What the Soul Wants

I am in the shower one morning, years ago in another bathroom, in another life, I have chosen the encaustic tiles under my feet, and the reclaimed sashed window, along with the skylight above me that lets all the light pour in. I love this room. The bathroom will end up being featured, with me in it, in several national print magazines,

as well as an internationally published interiors book that my friend will send me a photo of from a book shop in Finland. Me, there, in my dragon robe piling my hair up on top of my head.

On this morning, a weekend, my kids are slowly rolling out of bed and pottering around the kitchen as they do. I can hear their movements on the other side of the bathroom door, but I’m not coming out just yet, because I’m listening to a podcast. The podcast and the host are both well known. She is engaging and inspiring, but she’s talking about purpose, and I’m sceptical. I glaze over a bit when people talk about purpose, mostly because I don’t know if I have one, or what it is, or how I would identify it, if I were in its vicinity.

Somewhere between that day and this one, where I wake up in a different house with a different partner, but still make my kids the exact same things for breakfast, I do know what purpose is, I do believe we all have one that is unique, I think those that pursue the uncovering of it are the luckiest people on this earth. I don’t believe it has to be grand, though it probably is, if we change our definition of what grand is. I believe there’s a part we’re all playing and the micro choices we make day in day out are what lead to us either fulfilling our purpose or not.

I don’t know that everyone’s purpose should be their job, but I also don’t see why it can’t be. I do believe that money will be paid to you as a byproduct of you doing the thing that is the most helpful thing you could be doing on the planet. I do not believe that everyone’s purpose is to explicitly “help people”, (in fact, this option hadn’t really occurred to me for my own life), but I do believe that when you strip enough away, and are doing what you’re supposed to be doing, you will naturally be helpful to people.