Think Small

I have wondered, as you have, in a quiet, reflective moment: What is the purpose of my life? Why am I here on planet earth? What am I to be or to do? And I know the traditional answers. If you are secular, it is to be successful. If you are religious, it is to live in praise of and gratitude to your Creator. If you are a humanist, it is to do good for others. If you are entirely self-centered, it is promote yourself over all things. The fundamental problem with the question: What is the purpose of my life? is that it is set in constant, unpredictable, sometimes unwanted change. I am one person, a constant, in the midst of change that often borders on chaos. What if question was: “what is my purpose in this particular moment, this experience, this encounter? What if the question is daily or hourly? Let me give you an example.

Last evening, just before sunset, I drove to the highest point I could find here in the White Mountains in order to catch beautiful photographs of what was to be a spectacular sunset. Well, the sunset itself was a dud. I watched the sun go down without any colorful fanfare, returned to the car to put my camera away, and saw in an entirely different direction the rays of sunset bouncing off giant, puffy white clouds. And for the next few moments, I took photo after photo of this magical scenery. It seems that I missed a sunset in favor of a cloud. But my purpose was to capture a sunset. That’s what I thought originally. Instead I came home with a cloud. What if I stopped asking “what is the purpose of my life” and began asking “what is the meaning of this moment?” By not getting the sunset in the lens of my camera, did
I miss the mark? Fail to accomplish? Go home empty-handed? On the contrary, I got the most beautiful, stunning, remarkable cloud picture possible in that moment.

Consider the possibility of living moments and days instead of months and years. Maybe who I am is not the finished doctoral dissertation at the end of my life. Maybe who I am is a day by day conscious encounter with the mystery of life. It’s not what it all adds up to…it’s what happens right now. You’ve heard the expression: “Think big!” Not for me. It’s the moments that count, and I don’t want to miss any of them. That particular cloud will never happen like that again, and I was there to witness its grandeur. Purpose enough.