Ever find yourself wondering if there’s even a point?
Especially these days, which some are calling the ‘end times.’
These thoughts can come to a terrifying crescendo.
With the pressures of climate change, rising authoritarianism, and folks wondering if AI will save us or destroy us, the question of meaning and purpose is getting stressful.
It isn’t a new question. And it has never been easy.
Even with the sense of a secure future, the optimism of a growing economy, and political stability, apparently successful folks have mid-life crises.
What if the question of meaning was not about an outcome but a certain kind of commitment to yourself?
At age 17, I was forced to take a job interview which was really just door-to-door sales induction.
After a day of trekking around workplaces and homes in the outer suburbs with a bag of cheap plastic toys and gadgets like a dodgy Santa Claus, I was offered a ‘job.’ The job was commission-based cold selling.
My mentor was a tall lanky guy, a few years older than me with energy to burn and endless jokes. He absolutely loved the work.
He made good money and enjoyed the interaction. He knew most everyone we visited and had a running banter with comments about people’s kids, last week’s sports results, and special birthday notes.
I, on the other hand, was practically suicidal by the end of the day.
I tried all day to absorb my mentor’s attitude. Tried to see the opportunity, the joy, the service of it all.
I struggled with my university educated superiority which judged him and the whole industry as pointless, wasteful profit seeking.
He made people happy. That was his job. The cheap plastic gadgets were just the vehicle.
Through him, I could see the honor in it, and I tried to imagine making the best of it.
I was under duress to take the job.
My aunt found me in a deep black hole of fury and hopelessness. She showed me the box I had put myself in. She reminded me I could choose myself and live with the consequences.
Trying to choose that job made everything feel pointless.
The point of the experience was to force me to choose myself.
But was it also my future calling to me?
It was many decades later that I consciously fell in love with marketing. And now I understand how economic exchange, the market and business practices, can be a sacred relationship process in the world channel.
I’m still against making money from cheap plastic gadgets. But I’ve also learnt how the concrete magic of our economic entanglement with the world can be unfolded with practices, tools and techniques.
Choosing the path which is yours has to be a risk or there is no adventure.
It can feel scary at times and there is something right about that.
No risk, no reward, right?
What about you? Have you ever felt that everything was pointless?
Ever found yourself in a box of your own making?
Take a moment to remember what helped.
Then, consider if there was a commitment to yourself that you were avoiding.
It might be that we create the point with the risky move of making a promise.
To ourselves and to the world.
You’ve got this.
And the world needs you.
Love
Hellene