It's hard to know which way to go when everything feels shifting and uncertain - but purpose and ... [+]
This is the final installment in a four-part series on Purpose During A Pandemic. Part 1 covered why purpose is important for keeping us healthy, Part 2 investigated the difference between purpose and productivity, and Part 3 explored how we can find purpose by making the most of the disruptions we’re facing. This final portion discusses where and how we can find direction when everything around us is shifting.
There’s no denying that we’re in a period of extreme disruption. Between a pandemic, boiling outrage over racial inequalities, and sky-high unemployment rates, uncertainty is our new normal - and it’s affecting all of us.
“We’re all vulnerable,” wrote Senior Economics Correspondent Neil Irwin in The New York Times while analyzing recent unemployment trends, “whether we work in an office or a factory or a construction site; whether our employer is public or private; whether our work can easily be migrated to a home office or not.”
Even with states reopening and many states’ Covid-19 rates currently declining, change and uncertainty will be a part of our reality for a long time to come. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has said that economic recovery may until the end of 2021, if not years, according to The Washington Post.
A natural reaction to an uncertain future is to freeze in place. If we don’t know what’s to come, how can we even think about moving forward? Yet without a sense of direction and purpose, our physical and mental health, workplace effectiveness, and relationships can all suffer. We need to find a way to create our own direction, even when we don’t know what’s to come - especially since we’re going to be in this state of limbo for quite a while.
We Are Questioned By Life
A powerful answer on how to create direction during changing times comes from psychiatrist Viktor Frankl. Frankl was developing a theory of human motivation when the Nazis annexed his home country of Austria. He spent years in concentration camps and lost his wife, brother, mother, and father to the Holocaust.
After the war, Frankl wrote Man’s Search for Meaning, which weaves together his lived experiences and his theory. Named one of the ten most influential books by the Library of Congress, I’ve made it assigned reading in a number of my classes at Bates College, including a Life Architecture course for upperclassmen about how we might go about creating fulfilling lives and work after college.
My biggest takeaway from Frankl’s work - and the message that has literally been keeping me afloat during the past few months - is his perspective on how we find direction and purpose.
He notes that we typically look for answers from “life” and, more specifically, from those around us: supervisors, politicians, and family and community leaders. We want to know what will be brought to us or given to us or laid out before us that will make us feel purposeful. Naturally, then, when things are uncertain and our leaders’ messages become unclear or contradictory, we can feel adrift and purposeless.
In contrast, when reflecting on his Holocaust experience Frankl wrote, “It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly...Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual. These tasks, and therefore the meaning of life, differ from man to man, and from moment to moment.”
We are questioned by life — daily and hourly.
What a powerful sentiment. Instead of asking what life and leaders are giving to us, we can find direction by answering the questions right in front of us.
For instance, the number one thing life has been asking of me since Covid-19 appeared is for me to be present for my young children as they process their sadness about losing school and friends, confusion about national unrest, and their uncertainty about the summer and fall ahead. Life has asked me, over and over, day after day, to be fully present for their fears and hurts without trying to fix them, to find ways to lift them up even when I only feel like crying, and to accept the inevitable disruptive bumps in their behavior that flow from their unsettled emotions. This is a big ask, and, quite frankly, a job I’d rather not take on without break for months on end. But it’s my and my husband’s current primary purpose, and it gets us out of bed every day. Each of us has our own personal questions that are being asked of us.
Likewise, many of us are facing major questions in our paid work lives. If we’ve managed to retain a job, the questions center on how we can continue to provide services - whatever form they may take - and find a sense of workplace belonging in a changed world. If we’re out of work, life is asking us to search not only for job openings, but for our optimal fit in the work world, which will make us an easier hire and a much more effective worker.
Frankl points out that with the shift in perspective from asking life for answers to being questioned by life, we no longer need to know the future, such as knowing when a vaccine for Covid-19 will clear the way for full re-engagement in society. “The present is everything as it holds the eternally new question of life for us,” he stated in lectures in 1946 that were recently published in English as the book Yes to Life: In Spite of Everything. “Now everything depends on what is expected of us. As to what awaits in the future, we don’t need to know that any more than we are able to know it.”
Another Layer of Questions
A focus on the immediate questions of life can indeed provide us with a sense of purpose and direction during moments of upheaval and crisis. As the peak of the first coronavirus wave abated, however, we gained mental space to begin to fully realize the many continuing uncertainties, which may have been even more unnerving. Now with protests and political unrest dominating the headlines and our minds, uncertainty has been compounded with genuine distress.
How can we move forward when so much is unknown, on both a micro and macro level?
Frankl believed the answer is to act in ways that transcend immediate necessities. In addition to day-to-day questions, there are deeper questions that call to us, he said. In introducing Yes to Life, psychologist Daniel Goleman writes that Frankl believed that one key source of meaning and direction comes from “creating a work, whether art or a labor of live - something that outlasts us and continues to have an impact.”
In other words, regardless of whether we know the precise contours of our work and home lives in the months ahead, we can focus on our aspirations of work that will outlast us and have an impact beyond ourselves. That is, in essence, the very definition of having purpose.
This work doesn’t have to be as grandiose as Frankl’s: he carried a draft manuscript of his life’s work in his coat to the concentration camp and had to discard it as soon as he arrived. Longing to recreate that manuscript was one of the forces that kept him striving to live. Most of us certainly don’t have that type of clarity about the work we want to do!
That said, we can center on what we DO know we want to create through our work, such as:
- The lasting impact we want to have on our customers/patients/clients, co-workers and/or direct reports
- How we want to contribute toward or further our company’s or organization’s mission
- Something we want to create as an individual during our lifetime that transcends our roles and affiliations
- The ways we want to take action against injustices rather than just observe and lament about them
There are so many forms that our larger “work” can take, and, honestly, none of them rests on what’s happening day to day. Also, some of these tasks may be paid, some may be unpaid, but they’re all our work.
For instance, a deep question life is asking of me is what attributes I want to help my students at Bates College to develop, and why. In the midst of intense uncertainty in higher education, I can still work on answering that question and find a firm sense of direction in doing that work, regardless of which exact form my Fall teaching ends up taking.
Concluding Thoughts
None of us wanted to practice identifying and answering life’s questions at this time and in this way, that’s for sure. While undesired, doing so is a skill set that will prove invaluable throughout our lifetimes. If we can find our sense of direction when everything around us is up in the air, imagine how powerful and impactful we’ll be in work and life when things eventually firm up.
This is the final installment in a four-part series on Purpose During A Pandemic. Part 1 covered why purpose is important for keeping us healthy, Part 2 investigated the difference between purpose and productivity, and Part 3 explored how we can find purpose by making the most of the disruptions we’re facing. Thanks for reading.
