126. Living with Purpose – Briana Nicole Henry
So I thought that was it: I thought acting was my purpose. But the pandemic forced me to ask, What is my purpose without acting? At the end of my life, what do I want to have accomplished? How will I want to be remembered?
This past year has forced me, like so many of us, to take a closer look at my life. Specifically I’ve been looking at the narrative around my “purpose”—what I’ve always thought of as “what I’m meant to do with my life.” It has always felt like a daunting question that seemed to require a definite answer, uncovering one singular passion.
I’ve always envied people like my husband. He fell in love with music when he was very young, became brilliant at it and committed to that path with such sureness. By contrast, my passion always felt like it was shifting. As a kid I loved animals and the outdoors, so I figured maybe I’d be a vet. Then I fell in love with sports and spent years succeeding and failing at that before realizing it was time to leave my volleyball days behind me.
Then, about a decade ago, I fell in love with acting. It was a space where I could explore, could become curious about my own feelings and childhood traumas (which most of us don’t escape) and to tell stories — to move people from one feeling to the next. So I thought that was it: I thought acting was my purpose. But the pandemic forced me to ask, What is my purpose without acting? At the end of my life, what do I want to have accomplished? How will I want to be remembered?
If you look at a tree, like the one I’m looking at outside of my window as I write this, I could say, “That tree provides oxygen to the atmosphere. That’s its purpose.” But is it? It’s also shelter to numerous animals and insects. It provides privacy for the neighbors whose windows are tucked behind it, and food for the birds and squirrels during spring when it’s fruiting. It is profoundly full of purpose, but in different ways. If one of those purposes were stripped from it, its existence would still be essential for many other reasons.
I have spent so much time this past decade healing old wounds, learning to navigate and hold space for my depression, learning to be a good partner, friend, daughter, and seeking ways to keep myself present and grounded. I realize now that this has all always been part of my purpose. The purpose is the healing, the seeking, the growing, the discovering. Purpose is something you become. It’s a way to live, an energy to embody. It’s the leaves, the fruits, the branches, the soil, the roots of the tree. Purpose can be found in everything we do and everything we already are.
– Briana Nicole Henry
Prompt:
Write about living with purpose. Write about the ways you do already, and the ways you hope to in the days, weeks, months, and years to come.
Annette Aghazarian
Location: Montreal
About: Living with purpose
Age: 53
Living with purpose
I think about this all the time. How do I help? Do I make anyone’s life better? Am I useful, needed? I am a mother, wife daughter. I know that people depend on me but I want to feel seen, valued. My ego is fragile. I need validation. I need praise. Strangers to follow me. As if a small icon, a blue thumbs up is going to change my life. No, it’s words. They’ve always been there. like song lyrics that repeat in my brain on a load all the time.
Tell me something good
Tell me that you love me, yeah
Tell me something good
Tell me that you like it, yeah
(Chaka Khan )
I grew up in a home with harsh criticism and no compliments. There was always constant judgment and complaints. We were immigrants so we had to do better than the locals. I became a shape shifter. I could do any accent, any voice. You couldn’t tell who I was or I came from. I studied, I worked I had a good job, so now what?
What is my purpose? Who am I really? To be honest, 2020 was not my worst year. I had a safe job (that I hated). I wasted time there and was undervalued and disrespected. I was already stuck.
COVID-19 gave me a lot of free time and less excuses. I decluttered. Closets, rooms and my mental state. I started writing more. I bought a camera. I started walking every day and photographing nature. Trees and sunsets every freaking day. My husband made fun of me. Some relatives on social media made nasty comments. I was hurt at first but then I learned.
I made some new friends. Strangers began following my Instagram account and loving my photos. The people in my mother’s senior building who were trapped indoors looked forward to my daily posts. They thanked me for capturing beauty.
Friends and relatives who I barely spoke to would begin texting me to tell me that when they saw a beautiful sunset they were thinking of me.
So what is my purpose? Am I an award-winning photographer? No. Did I discover the cure for Covid? No. Do I try every day to be a little better? Yes. Do I make people happy? I try. Some days are more successful than others.
“That's what alchemists do. They show that, when we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better, too.”
– Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
Anonymous
Location: Laramie, WY
Age: 43
Each time I consider my purpose, it strikes me how much my mind controls what I believe. On nights like tonight, I feel like every movement and breath has a purpose. Today, my humor helped me lighten others' moods, my learned and natural desires to listen connected me deeper to one of my therapy clients, and my intent to help linked me with my friend who asked for my help dog-sitting.
So in every which way, I lived with purpose. Last week, when my mood and spirit were in the dumper, I could not find a purpose or reason to continue. Without moving too profoundly into the doldrums, my life without action does not hold value or meaning.
In the spirit of action, I will continue to provide high-quality quality, volunteer for Safe Project, express gratitude, and make eye contact when I speak and love fully.
Evelyn Chapman
Location: London, England
About: Like many, this pandemic has inspired a lot of introspection and uncertainty. What I want is changing, and what I'm working towards seems unclear. Briana Nicole's tree metaphor alluding to people's many purposes struck a cord with me.
Age: 28
When I was little I wanted to live on a farm. I painted a picture of it and taped it above my bed at my grandmother’s house. I loved horses, all animals really, and I liked the idea of having a big space all to myself. Fields and fields to walk through in the evenings, running my hands through the long stems of the wildflowers I’d grow. Nurturing things and growing things and working with my hands. Later I took a turn (as I’m known to do) and decided I wanted to live in New York City like my Aunt who had an apartment in Brooklyn and a job in a shop in Soho. I liked the energy of the city, and how it made you feel invisible and special at the same time. Not like the suburbs of central New Jersey, which always felt wrong for me. Like I had been dropped in a strange place I didn’t belong. So years later I did move to Brooklyn. I studied acting, at the time I believed that was my purpose, and I came to believe I really belonged there in the whirl of noise and smells and colour and music. I’m not one for neighbours stopping in uninvited. Quiet roads and big houses make me uneasy. I laughed at the idea of me living on a farm; the thought of all that space terrified me. I needed to be surrounded, constantly distracted. The city and all its beautiful ferocity fed me for years.
Now I live in London with my partner, another long-time city dweller originally from the suburbs. We both believed that we would spend most of our lives working in offices, raising children in amongst the bustling markets and weaving bicycles and strollers and little dogs, and enjoying the benefits of a lively and diverse community around us.
Then the pandemic hit and everything changed. All the benefits of city living were gone. We wanted more distance from people, but suddenly everyone seemed uncomfortably close. We had been so thankful for our big park full of dogs running and children laughing, but it felt smaller by the day. And we started to wonder, do we miss the benefits of city living? Or is what we want at our core changing? It was fun to lay out a blanket in the grass on a sunny summer day and listen to the distant bass of Caribbean music spilling out of someone’s speaker. And watch kids play in the trees while their parents sat in distanced circles holding plastic cups of wine. We’d look around and say, see, this is what we want, right? But over time it all just amplified our own loneliness. And once winter came again, and Covid still hadn’t left us, we were trapped in our apartment with nowhere to walk, no one to visit, nothing to see but boarded up restaurants and dark shop windows. We began to talk wistfully about long walks through sloping hills, a garden to plant bulbs in for the next year, a pub we’d become regulars at, a little school to walk the kids to. But would we be bored? Would we be sacrificing any part of our careers?
I’ve realised all of this uncertainty is intrinsically intertwined with the years of confusion I’ve dealt with around my purpose. This big looming question that creeps in and ruins everything, what I’m meant to be doing? And am I doing enough? When I was younger the city inspired me, drove me. Now it mostly exhausts me and makes me feel powerless. In cities we’re always chasing
something - it’s why people in cities walk so fast. It gives them a fevered melody which I danced to happily for years. But maybe what I’m chasing now isn’t what I thought it was.
The more my partner and I discussed our ideal location, the more we realised that we were both growing out of the dreams we once had. This isn’t new to me - like I mentioned before, I’m quite fickle. First I wanted to be a writer, then an actor, then a writer again. For a brief time, I painted. And even with my writing, I’m never quite sure - should I pursue a career in content writing for marketing teams? Become a manager and have strategies and network and generate leads and drive profits. Should I work for a non-profit? Make real change? Or should I focus on writing more in my spare time? Maybe a book? My friend who works in publishing surprised me recently when she told me that she’d always believed that one day I would settle into a comfortable spot and begin writing and it would all pour out and flourish from there. And I like this idea more than anything now. Like a cat finding a spot of sunshine, I’ll curl up in a chair in a home that finally feels like a home and start to write something that one day I’ll finish. We’ll have a place that’s mostly peaceful except for when we fill it with laughter and music and friends. We’ll have children, teach those children to live outdoors and not on screens, and together we’ll play games and help with homework. It’ll be gruelling and exhausting and I imagine sometimes miserable as hell, but I’ll always return to my spot and I’ll write in brief but valuable moments of freedom. By chipping away at things I’ll actually accomplish things. Occasionally we’ll embark on wild adventures. We’ll bring our children back to the cities we once called home and show them what it feels like to be surrounded by noise and energy and they’ll love it as much as we did. And we’ll take them to jungles and ancient temples and islands and drive hours through rolling countryside. We’ll teach them to tread carefully, to take care, leave a small footprint, be mindful and kind and work hard. We’ll make new friends, form a community, build a support system for our growing family. And who knows, we might then move along, find another home, another community, another spot to curl up in. And all the while I’ll write stories and essays and maybe a children’s book or two and one of them may one day have some small impact on someone. I think all of that is enough for me.
Lorelle Mariel Murzello
Location: Mumbai
About: My name is Lorelle. I am an educator and researcher and when I am not working, I write, sing, play the guitar and nap. Writing this prompt brought to the fore some very bitter, but life-changing learning and unlearning.
Age: 25
There is this quote by Kurt Vonnegut that goes “And I urge you to please notice when you are happy and exclaim or murmur or think at some point: ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is’.”
Growing up, I believed that my life has purpose if I achieve my goals, get into a good university, get good grades, get a good job, live by “good” principles etc. However, life post-university made me question this sense of validation we seek from achieving and reaching socially acceptable and desirable milestones.
Being in lockdown and struck by the uncertainty of a pandemic made me question this sense of purpose that I continue to associate with being a productive and “good employee”. Both these needs have on many occasions, left me tired, exhausted, burnt-out and feeling like a doormat. Letting go (a little bit) of the need for this validation has helped me see myself in a new light- I can be the “Lorelle who does a good job with every task”, or “has a job and meets deadlines etc.” but that is a very small part of me and my life. I can be “Lorelle-who enjoys a good afternoon nap” or “Lorelle- who takes extended breaks” or “Lorelle- who asserts herself even at the cost of not being liked” or “Lorelle who can go on and on about a song”.
However, individualistic this might seem I feel like my sense of purpose in life doesn’t lie in what is at the end of the road. Much like what Vonnegut’s quote exclaims, it is about finding purpose and meaning in the little things that spark joy, curiosity, make me chuckle, or even elated.
For instance, I’ve recently started sharing songs I like on my Instagram with a little background story of the writing or how I relate to the song and the feel of the album and the artist. I can go on and on about Kacey Musgraves and talk about her like she’s my neighbour (or best friend :P). And even though, it might not be everyone’s cup of tea, I think I am fine with not being everyone’s cup of tea. But, I cannot deny myself the absolute joy I feel when talking about music.
Finding these moments, holding on to them, and finding meaning in my experience with them is something that makes me feel like my existence has a sense of purpose. It makes me feel like I’ve breathed that moment of joy and communicated it through more than just a murmur.