purpose

Age and the Loss of Innocence

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There are those exceptional moments in life when you experience crystal clarity in thought and purpose, when all is as it should be, when all is right and good with the world. But those moments are rare, are few and far between, and they almost always occur when you’re young. As a child, you didn’t have time to formulate your own beliefs; instead, your world view hinged on the beliefs of others. The innocence of youth is a wonderful carefree time in which the mind and the heart are free from the burdens of autonomous thinking and responsibility.

Then a tragic thing happens. You grow up. You question. You doubt. The world view you subscribed to when you were young no longer seems to apply. You wake up to discover you’ve been abandoned in a hostile world that makes no sense, and you’re forced to fend for yourself, to scrap together bits and pieces of the truth as you find them, to piece together some fragmentary understanding of who you are and why you’re here. You toil in the dark without relief, with only the cold and empty void of unconsciousness for an interlude. You’re faced with the prospect of death somewhere on the horizon, yet have no knowledge of when you’ll meet it face-to-face or what will happen when that day finally comes.

This of course is a necessary thing. Without the impetus to search for the truth, you would lay on your back day and night, unmotivated, listless and without purpose. It is this very emptiness, this very despair that compels you to move forward. You venture on. You hope and you pray that the light you seek at the end of the world exists, that the faith you placed in this unnamed truth was not in vain.

And sooner or later, one way or the other, you’ll find out.

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My Mission Statement

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I’ve spent the past few years thinking a lot about who I am and what I was made to do. It’s been a long journey, fraught with anxiety, self-doubt and confusion. I’ve traversed the desert of darkness and despair, have had to question whether or not I have a purpose, if I was meant to be a writer or if my art is just the accidental by-product of genes, passed on through countless generations, heralds of random chance and a fundamentally chaotic universe.

By attempting to comprehend my existence and its reason for being, I’ve come to a much fuller understanding of what it is I’m supposed to do.

It’s my sincere hope, of course, that everything I write will entertain and delight you, my readers. I want to make you happy. In a world filled with anxiety and despair, I want to give you leisure and rest.

But there’s more.

There are things I wish to communicate, themes that have surfaced over and over again as I’ve plumbed the depths of my imagination. Everything I write, while intended to entertain, also serves a higher purpose. What follows are three things I hope to accomplish as a writer.

1. To explore the entire spectrum of the human experience.

What motivates people to do what they do? Why do they feel a certain way? How do people react to the actions of others? These are just a few of the questions that fascinate me, questions that have set me on a path of exploration that’s taken me deep into the heart of humanity.

We are a species rich with depth and complexity. There are no simple answers; every question is answered by another question. Yet in the neverending process of asking new questions, we come to a fuller understanding of ourselves.

2. To discern and articulate the extraordinary that hides in the shadow of the ordinary.

As humans, we’re easily distracted by the everyday tedium of our existence. We lose ourselves in routine, becoming so absorbed in the doings of the world that we fail to see what lies beyond the surface.

I believe that beyond the thin veil of the ordinary lies something much more wondrous and strange than any of us could possibly imagine. I believe that once we train ourselves to see the world as something more, the cardboard superficiality of our dull surface-existence falls away to something much more rich and mysterious.

3. To demonstrate that life has meaning, that all of us have a purpose.

I firmly believe that existence has meaning. I will always believe it, no matter how confused I become, no matter how many times others may argue to the contrary. In the vastness of the cosmos, we are not alone. Each of us has been given a mission, some task to perform in love for the benefit of the human family.

Simply by being who I am and by writing what I discover hidden within my soul, I hope to convey this message to others, to give hope where so many have fallen to despair. I wish to show the universe for what it is, a cosmic framework in which everyone and everything are interconnected for an everlasting good that was made to be shared.

How about you? What’s your mission?

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