Purpose? Why?
James (Jay) Koster II
Inspiring kindness, seeding hope and nurturing purpose to help humanity thrive together.
"The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for." - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I recognized in re-reading this weeks notes, that I jumped right into "Inspire Hope - Inspire Purpose", and then pushed right through to the Four Forces. In hindsight, I think I skipped through a very important part of the journey. While we all understand hope, do we really understand purpose - why purpose, and what is it? We'll jump back into the Four Forces in more detail next week, but let's focus on purpose today.
In most cases, when asked, the responses to "What is purpose", seem quite similar to asking a child what is a dollar? 100 pennies, 4 quarters, 10 dimes, a dollar. You often hear "purpose is you're why", "its the greater good", etc. But those responses don't really tell you what purpose is, or why it could be important.
Dostoyevsky's words (which I've used in past posts) help shed some light on the purpose topic for me - in essence he is saying "something to live for beyond just living". But even those words seem to pre-suppose we should desire, for some reason, to do more than just live. And as I research and think, I think it goes even deeper than desire.
When I think about what makes humans unique - the science of our larynx and impact on our language capabilities, the size of our brains, our abstract reasoning capabilities and related ability to imagine and innovate, or the uniqueness of our hands and our dexterity and grip - I'm left with a view that all of these unique aspects of being human help define a shared purpose for humanity to thrive together.
Those things that make us unique all point to our abilities to communicate, to learn, to share knowledge generation to generation, to craft, and all those "abilities" afford us the opportunity to evolve, to improve, to grow as individuals and as a society. So what makes us unique, exists to make us better. To thrive together.
If we believe we exist for the purpose of thriving together, we then begin to understand that individual purpose, or organizational purpose help connect each of us to humanity's shared purpose. All of us have a flame - a pilot light if you will - of purpose, a part of our DNA that has evolved generation after generation willing us to thrive together. Let's all discover and live our own unique "why's" to help humankind fulfill its potential.
Down the road we will cover a deeper definition of purpose, so we will leave today at the "why" of a purpose. That's enough for a Friday, so best wishes for your weekend.
Independent Board Member & Strategic Advisor
4 年My colleague raises an interesting metaphor around our “pilot light” or the “why” so many leadership speakers discuss. Each of us, as leaders of businesses (but most importantly- people) have a duty to identify the unique DNA of our team members and create pathways for them to thrive. I continue to see numerous business leaders offering linear narratives - or “one size fits all” zealotry that misses the point of these unique and challenging times. Let’s all think about each of our team members as their own beautifully unique ecosystems - and strive to harness their individual DNA or “why”. The result will be an outcome for our society that’s unimaginably positive.