Purpose. It’s what all of us look for in life. Whether it be in relationships, hobbies, work, money, everyone exists to have a sense of purpose, or at least they should. But what happens when that purpose flickers and fades away. The joy in one’s eyes, that 5 year old child-like eagerness to start a new day, to explore a new adventure. When that happens, what is there left to do? Do we simply go on, day by day, hoping for that purpose to one day magically re ignite itself?

Do we try to restart that purpose ourselves, find a new hobby? A new skill to learn? A new social group? Something that we can say is our new purpose on this rock spinning through the vacuum of space? Without meaningful connections in our lives, relationships, intimacy, simple conversations, what is keeping us here on this earth. Simply existing to be another member of society? We start of our lives eager as can be, a child exploring and learning day in and day out, figuring things out, getting hurt, learning from our experiences, but that fades away, we become apprehensive to the idea of new challenges, apprehensive to anything that will change the regular lifestyle we’re all so accustomed to.

We exist in a landscape where change and exploration is frowned upon, we continue on, day in and day out with repetition, repetition, repetition. Wake up, wake up, wake up. Eat, eat, eat. Work, work, work. Sleep, sleep, sleep. What happens when that all becomes too much. We think it’s a normal existence, the idea of living without any major changes, we’re afraid of change, we like our comfort, or typical mundane existence. White picket fence with a spouse and kids. Sometimes that becomes too much though. Not too much in the sense that there’s simply too much going on to handle, but the opposite, it becomes too much to have nothing, nothing meaningful happening in our life. Too much to simply exist for the sake of existing, to take up space, to breathe in and out, day after day. It’s a sense of everything in life being too much, when in reality it’s all too little. Too little time in the day, too little exploration, too little commotion, comradery.

Wake up, wake up, wake up. Eat, eat, eat. Work, work, work. Sleep, sleep, sleep. We celebrate the new year, then by December we all wonder where that year went. Maybe we can recall a few odd days here and there, maybe something eventful did happen, but most times these major events that do create lasting memories are tragic in nature. Marking the death of a loved one, and with that, a death of a piece of us. January blends into February, becomes March, and next thing you know we’re celebrating our birthday in November, only to repeat the cycle one more year.

Wake up, wake up, wake up. Eat, eat, eat. Work, work, work. Year in, year out, decade in, decade out. Soon enough that 5 year old who was excited by the prospects of the world and what was ahead, is now dreading what lies ahead and simply reminiscing about the past, the past when there was a purpose, the glimmer in our eyes about what was to come. Soon enough that 21 year old who was happy to celebrate their adulthood is 65, and begins to even wonder if we ever were that person before, we look back at our life, and can’t recognize the person we started out as. Almost as if the previous us had been killed, and replaced with a shell of our former self.

Our lives become like a campfire, surrounded by the comradery of others, with a bright, eager flame inside, but slowly, just as the night goes on at camp, so do our lives, and with it, that comradery of others begin to fade away, fewer and fewer people are around, and the flame inside dwindles, never to burn as bright as it once had, never returning to the previous glory, and by the time everyone around the fire is gone, so to is the fire inside of us. When that fire is fully extinguished, so to is the purpose inside all of us, simply waiting for another camp out, for someone or some-thing to come around and reignite that fire inside of us, we may long for this re ignition, hopeful that one day it will happen, but in reality that campsite has long been abandoned, never to be returned to, and with that, inside of us, our purpose that was once a roaring bonfire, feeding off of the fuel of everything around us, becomes nothing more than a distant memory, almost questioning if it had ever even happened in the first place.

-Written by Austin Remetta