Purpose and Meaning
– the Differences in Paying the Mortgage for What? And Working, Learning and Playing to Contribute
Read any blog site, look in to the social, social media and the social media professing professional objectives, and it will not take more than three swipes or clicks to come across a self-awareness and self improvement piece of advice. There are some extremely good writers, presenters and marketers selling their approaches. Some even are down-to-Earth enough to note there is no panacea. All allude to the answers being inside the reader or consumer of the presentations. Hard work and dedication will be required, if not the prerequisite, in a number of examples.
All can become a little platitudinous if stripping away the fine presentations. Regularly boiling down to knowing what you want, having the capability to focus, the good sense to ask others who can engage and offer practical support in the journey to whatever dream or aspiration you are seeking to attain.
In this time of ever greater inequity, where Gini Coefficients are highlighting fewer and fewer of us will attain the heights of Mammon some of the marketers have achieved, the suggestion is we need to ask two fundamental questions:-
Do you know your purpose in working and your work-life balancing?
Does what you are doing with purposefulfil your meaningin life?
As with numerous words in any language, possibly more so in English than others, purpose and meaning are used interchangeably in a number of situations; particularly in this purpose and meaning in work and in work-life balancing. Or should this even be life-work balance?
Purpose is the reason something is done or answers why you make the immediate effort. It is the definite aim, the reason why you get up and go out in the rain of grey and bleak day to the job that has lost meaning for you. But the purpose is to earn pay and go on holiday come the good days
Meaning goes beyond this. It is something not directly expressed, regularly the longer term in to which purpose fits. Pay the bills (purpose) but the real meaning in life was to savour fresh challenges well beyond the mundane house, commute, job, commute, house.
Standing on Milton Keynes railway station looking around at all my fellow passengers waiting to go into London.
There are some school holidays, mums taking children to the museum — purpose: keep kids happy. Meaning? Children doing better than parents? Progress to where? A bigger mortgage? Reassess meaning in life
Families going to ‘do the sights’ if dad stops looking at his company phone every 30 seconds — Purpose (job) destroying meaning (family)?
Teenagers, in small groups heading down to town to explore, perhaps do some project work for school. Posing as a purpose, perhaps starting to think about tertiary education and go ponder the fundamentals in meaning?
Coming to light during the last decade are youngsters who see their self-esteem undermined by the ephemeral demands of staying hip/cool/flossy /downtown/kicky/sassy/chichi (the words keep moving to have us less than edgy people outside) on social media. Demands? Reflective of how the here and now has overpowered and people who do not fit the fashion of the moment, start questioning themselves as to the meaning of their lives if they do not fit in.
Always remember, fashion comes and goes. Style is something idiosyncratic carrying you past the fads of the moment. Being stylish is the way to reinforce self-esteem and reinforce your purpose whilst you search for new meaning in your life.
Some people follow fashion as their purpose in life but few, stylists will be able to name them, have style-conveying meaning beyond the immediate fashion statement.
When we are young, do we ever think about the difference between purpose and meaning? When we are older, do we get to reassess and regret too much purpose and not enough doing the meaning of life?
Are we what we do? The Difference between a Job and Work — The Gig Economy Grows; more purpose but how many can find meaning in what, and how, they are doing work?
The commuters with flexi time jobs or those headed to meetings about work. Many of us are self-employed, sole traders seeking work or pursuing work-requiring input from this or that salaried person. Jobbing people. As with purpose and meaning, work and job take on different connotations.
The salaried people, different shapes, different guises, headed to their job. A question so many of us ask ourselves nowadays is — Am I enjoying my job? Some of us have the choice to opt out of one job and move to another. The business philosophy of Charles Handy resonates as, two generations later, business gurus say we will have five different careers; Handy talked of three distinct careers when writing in the 1970s. Jobs to deliver purpose; the deeper set of questions of work with meaning is not there but is now a fundamental for many people.
The English language is constantly evolving and we all see new ways to clarify feelings and events — things. But are we able to articulate the meaning in our lives? We all know people who rush through days, move with purpose but, at the end of the day we say ‘feck them, they are just grabbing and selfishly barging on’. But how many of us have, or know others who have, the style with which we move through days causing others to stare and say ‘ they have found their meaning in work and life?’
