To grow and to serve in harmony, here and now

After a couple of iterations, I arrived at the calling stated above. I used a method described by Steve Pavlina on his blog. Basically, you sit for a while and answer the following question repeatedly:

What is my true purpose in life?

It worked pretty well. I got the answer I am still living with on the 51st try. I also had a couple of partial hits before that.

Now I want to take some time to dig deeper into what this means for me. The best way I can think of is to pose questions and just wait for the answers. The first time I really sat with this idea of posing questions to myself was listening to the Jordan B. Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life. He ends the book with a story about a pen of light. You could call it wisdom. Once you have this pen of light, the question becomes:

What shall I write with my pen of light?

Here is what I am going to do. Formulate on-the-spot questions and start answering. Since my calling is split into four parts (growth, service, harmony, and presence), I’ll use those to guide my thinking.

Here is my first attempt at general questions.

• What?
  • What is it? What does it mean for me?
  • What are its components? How would I break it down into pieces?
• How?
  • How do I measure it?
  • How do I evaluate where I stand?
  • What does it look like in day-to-day?
  • How does a goal supporting it look like?
• Feelings
  • What are some feelings associated with it? How do I feel when I am in sync?
  • What are some feelings undermining this? How does out-of-sync feel?
• Past experience
  • What are some foundation memories relating to this?

Today is about meaning. I’ll catch up with the rest some other time.

Alright, let’s start.

Growth

I always felt an intense drive to understand how things work. I must have driven my parents crazy during my why phase. And it isn’t gone; I still find myself asking why lots of time about entirely ordinary things. I regularly think of myself as an external observer of the world who looks at seemingly random pieces and connects the dots. What others see as expected, I only see it as a materialization of all the possibilities that could have been. And I am very interested in why this state is the one I am seeing.

This strive for comprehension is one part of growth.

The other is much more selfish. I simply want to become a good human being. This obviously poses the question of what is good, but let’s leave this aside for the moment and concentrate on self-improvement. I am deeply passionate about improving and getting better at whatever I care about. I enjoy the process of striving, failing, and trying again. I want to be proud of who I am and like the person I am becoming.

Growth is understanding the world and improving my ability to navigate it.

Service

Service first came to me by reading a novel called Way of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman. I think the idea is best described in the movie based on the book. During a scene, a young athlete (Dan) confronts an old gas station attendant (Socrates). Their conversation goes like this:

Dan: What would you say if I told you that I keep seeing those shoes in a dream I keep having?
Socrates: I’d say maybe you’re still asleep. You can live a whole lifetime without ever being awake.
Dan: Hey, Socrates. If you know so much, how come you’re working at a gas station?
Socrates: This is a service station. We offer service. There’s no higher purpose.
Dan: Than pumping gas?
Socrates: Service to others.

The book was a great read; it awakened my appetite for “sensible spirituality.” There are many criticisms of this phrase over the web—most deal with religion. But that’s definitely out of scope for now.

So what is service?

Service isn’t blind servitude. I think it is the opposite; it’s having the ability and the courage to choose a master. It is caring and going the extra mile for others, and doing what’s right.

It’s the way we do business by serving the needs of our customers. It’s serving your Team, be it your marriage, family, friends, or colleagues.

It isn’t necessarily putting others’ needs in front of yours but seeking a win-win and doing more good than harm. It’s creating value, sharing it, and giving it away.

I think my idea of servitude stems from creating value. There are many ways to make value. Here are a few:

• listening to someone who wants to be heard
• building something new
• sharing ideas with others
• standing up and leading a group

What’s common in all of them is that they involve others.

I think you can only truly create value if others are involved. You cannot create value if what you make isn’t valuable for anyone else. This is not to say it’s useless, quite the contrary. If no one values it but you, I consider it growth.

I was always proud of the fact that I can create value for others. And I was never afraid that others might use my creation for gain or even take it away. I believe in the ability of invention, not necessarily the end result. If you can create, that can never be taken away.

We also make lots of value that’s hard to take away; think about relationships, for instance.

I am passionate about creating value whether it stays with me or goes out to the world. I love the act much more than the end result. Value comes in all shapes and forms. I want to create it with everything I do.

Service is creating and giving away value.

Harmony

Initially, my need for harmony rose from the fact that growth and service seem to be opposing forces. I think to some extent, they are. Would I favor myself and growth or others and service?

I’ll be honest, I put myself first, and I am selfish.

Everyone is; the difference is that I am aware. I thought about this a lot and concluded that I know my needs, and I am frank about it with others. I do not underrate my own desires, and I generally do not put other people’s wishes in front of mine. Of course, there are exceptions.

What colors this situation is that I strive for win-win situations where my desires are not in conflict but in harmony with others. Yes, I am willing to change my desires to achieve a win-win. I am also willing to make compromises and sacrifice shallow needs for deeper ones.

So harmony, for one, is balancing growth and service. Not letting the strive for either starve the other.

Another component of harmony is accepting the world. Accepting the fact of being out of control. While not forgetting that I do have control over lots of things. I am just one in a greater whole. Loving my fate. Being at peace with whatever life throws at me.

The third and final piece of harmony is inner peace. Existing as a whole, physically, mentally, and spiritually. I am not a big believer in the supernatural. However, the complexity of our world always fascinated me. And I admit, there is a strange order in things. I found that you can either accept it or work against it. I chose acceptance, and the universe returns the favor.

Harmony is balance and amor fati.

Presence

Before we had kids, already parents always told me there is never a perfect time.

Don’t wait for the job, the house, the whatever…

We didn’t, and it was our best decision. Continuing this train of thought, you never really should wait for perfect timing. Be it in life or on the stock market. Not only is it impossible, but it delays reward and learning and quite possibly leads to a missed opportunity.

Presence is about getting started, about not waiting for the perfect moment or sitting in analysis paralysis. It’s living in the present.

It’s treasuring memories but not lingering in the past. It’s using my imagination for the future but not dwelling over it.

Presence is the urgency to follow my calling; it’s a reminder to do the right thing in every moment.