What is the utility in believing you have a purpose?
I don’t think that watching the sun rise over Prospect Park is my purpose, but I do think it's part of it.
I don’t know if I have a purpose. I don’t know if anyone does. I have no way of proving (a) that I have a purpose, (b) that I don’t have a purpose, (c) that anyone has a purpose, or (d) that no one has a purpose. One of my favorite things about reading philosophy is that these people set out to prove things that seem so unprovable, including literally proving that God exists. Wow! To me, it’s not provable that God exists. There’s nothing anyone could say to me to prove, without a doubt, that God exists.
But.
That’s just what I believe, right now! The truth is, I don’t know what I will believe in the future, because I have no idea what the future holds. Maybe something will happen to me that makes me believe in God. Maybe I will believe in God so much that I start proving God exists to other people. It seems unlikely, but I don’t know! I could wake up tomorrow and gravity doesn’t exist anymore (unlikely, yes, impossible? no). I might believe God’s existence is unprovable, but that doesn’t mean God’s existence actually is unprovable.
All I know for sure is that right now, I’m choosing to be a person for whom the existence or non-existence of God is unprovable.
Similarly, I can choose to be a person who believes that I have a purpose, or I can choose to be a person who believes I don’t have a purpose. The purposefulness or purposelessness of one’s life is unprovable. So whether you believe in having a purpose or not is really just, in my opinion, your choice.
Sure, I might not actually have a purpose. That’s something I’ll never know — it’s not for me to know. It’s for not-God to know, if anyone. So with that in mind, what happens if I choose to believe I have a purpose? What do I unlock?
I guess it’s time for me to come out as someone who actively chooses to believe I have a purpose, whether or not I actually do. This purpose became clear to me when I turned thirty, or that’s what I decided; that’s my story and I’m sticking to it, because everything true is also a story you decided you wanted to believe was true.
For my thirtieth birthday, my wife Jess (then merely my girlfriend!) invited friends of mine to write and send her a play about me — a memory, a dream, whatever. I had no idea this was happening! Jess told me she was doing a reading of a play of hers (yes we’re both writers, yes both gay, yes absolutely) and when I showed up at this dance studio in Brooklyn, all these friends of mine said SURPRISE! And I still thought it was somehow a reading of Jess’s, but I soon learned that actually these friends were going to perform, neo-futurist style, the plays written about me.
To watch my life and friendships reflected back to me, play after play after play, was an out-of-body experience and a gift beyond compare. I got to glimpse how my friends saw me, or how they wanted me to see them seeing me. I was seen and known, over and over again, by the people who’ve seen me at my best, my worst, my new best, my new worst. They told me who I am to them, which is to say, they told me who I am.
There were plays where I fumbled through understanding my sexuality, plays where I guided others through theirs, plays where we reckoned with the passing of time and distance, plays where we ate lunch in the clouds, plays where I burped and died, plays where we all sang together (literally!) about the gift of being an audience member.
Watching all of the plays, mouth agog, it became abundantly clear to me that:
I am gay
I love my friends
The TV show Survivor may continue for longer than we deem possible
I am obsessed with theater
With me, my loved ones can be themselves — scared, brave, wise, in progress.
I was completely euphoric that night. Clarity is so rare; clarity about yourself even rarer. And that night, I had it. I saw it. Is that God, proof of or otherwise? I saw me, and I saw my purpose, or what felt like my purpose, or what I chose to see as my purpose:
My purpose is to make the world incrementally better by creating spaces where we can think, together, about the things too scary to think about alone.
We will always need these spaces, no matter what the fuck is going on around us. We can’t know the future but we can study the past; we always have needed these spaces and we always have found them. We see these spaces across time, history and cultures — around campfires, in barns, on couches, under the covers, lit by flashlight, by sunlight, by moonlight.
We need spaces to think together about the things too scary to think about alone.
These spaces won’t save the world. I’m not even sure what “saving the world” means. But these spaces might save a minute, an hour, a day, a life, even, and I do know what that means.
Choosing to believe I have a purpose allows me to do things I believe make the world an incrementally better place. I feel self-conscious even writing that, because it sounds so cheesy. But believing that I have a purpose makes me care less about sounding cheesy. Who fucking cares? So what if it’s a small thing. Did I help make your day better? Did I help make you want to stick around, even if just for a minute? Did I make you feel a little braver, a little less alone?
That’s what I want to do. That’s what I do with people I love. That’s what I do with my art. My art is for people I love, whether we know each other yet or not. If you’re here reading this, I’m writing this for you, because you are one of the people I love. This newsletter is one of those spaces where we can think about the scary things, together, because you don’t have to think about them alone, not all the time.
When I watched the sunrise over the lake in Prospect Park this morning, I felt emboldened to try to live out the purpose that was reflected back to me, the purpose I chose to embrace. I felt emboldened to write this piece.
I’ve watched that sunrise many times now, and I hope to watch it many more times. I’ll take however many I can get!
This is my purpose, I’ve decided.
What purpose is being reflected back to you?
What if you chose to believe in it?
Share your answer here, if you’d like. I would love to hear. I’ll include the responses in the next newsletter, anonymously, if people choose to share.