Ask HN: How do I find my “purpose”?

> But the one belief I've come to is that we do ourselves a disservice when we fall pray to the idea that the universe has some purpose for us.

I spent my 20's agonizing over whether or not I was working toward a purpose. While there is value in introspection, I regret that I devoted so much time to this question. I was not living in the moment, I was not enjoying my life. I'd constantly question whether I was on the wrong path, if I could have been more impactful if I had only taken that job at the risky climate-focused start-up, gone back to school for a PhD, quit everything and traveled the world, etc.

Do not fall into this trap. We cannot know our purpose of our life until it is over. Like many others in this thread, I highly recommend "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl. It's probably the only book on this topic that I actually found helpful.

You pass butter.

So I've been searching for my "purpose" for about 10 years, and unlike some other commenters here my personal experience makes me believe it's possible to consciously discover/create your purpose. But I don't see purpose as anything particularly religious or dramatic–simply that you can reflect on the life you have in front of you and feel content/at peace with where you are.

Nowadays, I consider myself fairly happy. Here is an incomplete list of things I did to get closer to answering the ever elusive question:

- I retraced my childhood memories to resurface long forgotten hobbies and activities that brought me joy, focus, and interest. For instance, as a kid I used to spend hours and hours drawing my favourite FFVII characters, puzzling over difficult math problems, playing piano, and more. Not all of these turned out to still be interesting to the adult me, but if you're looking for ideas on what kind of activites might bring you fulfilment, your childhood interests (or their underlying motivations) are often a good place to start.

- I attempted a bunch of new things over the course of multiple years. A non-exhaustive list of things I tried: learning German, living in 3 different countries, running a marathon, doing a triathlon, going to law school, taking watercolor painting lessons, doing a sculpting course, learning jazz piano, spending time in a Buddhist temple, creating a mobile app, etc. etc. Most of these I invested 3+ months of regular commitment to give them a proper shot, but some only ~20 hours. And if you want to know how many actually stuck with me, optimistically I'd say about 20%–but going through the 80% to find this 20% was more than worth it for me. Point being, I spent a lot of time (and energy) trying out things I didn't really end up liking in order to find the few that I did.

- Lots and lots of introspection and self-inquiry regarding my emotions, motivations, and values. What do I stand for? What can I not live without? Why do I do the things I do? Why did I choose the paths I chose? What do I wish I could have chosen? What did I stop doing? Where are these emotions coming from? Nobody could answer these questions for me, and oftentimes neither could I. But I didn't stop turning them over and over in my head throughout all the years, and slowly over time I started to form half-answers and then eventually full answers to some of these questions.

- Sometimes I landed at major crossroads in my life, and I just couldn't decide. For a long time I remained in this limbo state, agonizing over which path to take, until I learned that just picking something and moving on is a much better approach. Biasing towards action helped me gain key information faster than just sitting around thinking, and I learned either that I do in fact enjoy the path I chose or that I would I rather be doing activity instead–in which case I promptly changed to doing instead. (Note that this kind of goes against the point above on introspecting a lot. I guess the key takeaway is to make sure you're doing both, but people tend to overthink and underact.)

- Whenever I wasn't sure about how much I valued something, I just cut it out of my life. The things that are truly important to me have a way of coming back to haunt me until the point I can't stand not pursuing them any longer. Example 1: I didn't play piano for a few years, and deeply missed it by the second year. Example 2: I didn't do any rigorous academic study for 5+ years, and one day realized how important intellectual rigor was to my own sense of identity. I don't know if I actually recommend this method though, as it's an expensive way to learn a lesson and some consequences are difficult to reverse (if at all). I often wonder if there are better ways of determining what's valuable to myself without going through this separation process.

I'm going to stop here before I end up rambling; I hope the above will help you in one way or another. All in all, I believe it's worth searching for a life of purpose, whatever that might mean to you. To strive for anything less feels like doing yourself a disservice, because what's the point of living if you're not enjoying life in all its glorious suffering and beauty?

So good luck, I'll be racing you to the peak!

The world is full of market failures but yeah, they approximate each other.

I like this passage from "Demian" by Herman Hesse:

And at this point I felt the truth burning within me like a sharp flame, that there was some role for everybody but it was not one which he himself could choose, re-cast and regulate to his own liking. One had no right to want new gods, no right at all to want to give the world anything of that sort! There was but one duty for a grown man; it was to seek the way to himself, to become resolute within, to grope his way forward wherever that might lead him. The discovery shook me profoundly; it was the fruit of this experience. I had often toyed with pictures of the future, dreamed of roles which might be assigned to me --- as a poet, maybe, or prophet or painter or kindred vocation.

All that was futile. I was not there to write poetry, to preach or paint; neither I nor any other man was there for that purpose. They were only incidental things. There was only one true vocation for everybody - to find the way to himself.

He might end as poet, lunatic, prophet or criminal - that was not his affair; ultimately it was of no account. His affair was to discover his own destiny, not something of his own choosing, and live it out wholly and resolutely within himself.

Anything else was merely a half life, an attempt at evasion, an escape into the ideals of the masses, complacency and fear of his inner soul. The new picture rose before me, sacred and awe-inspiring, a hundred times glimpsed, possibly often expressed and now experienced for the first time.

I was an experiment on the part of nature, a 'throw' into the unknown, perhaps for some new purpose, perhaps for nothing and my only vocation was to allow this 'throw' to work itself out in my inner most being, feel its will within me and make it wholly mine. That or nothing!