But What About My Personal Legend?

Maybe itʻs Good Work but is it the Right Work...

Aloha and welcome - or welcome back - to my weekly essays. I had so many questions I wanted to explore after a year of writing memoir about the transformative five-year period in my life from 1992-1997. It was more of an intuition than a plan to start with questions. It is now week three of this new phase of essay, and it has become clear to me that exploring questions is how I get to apply the lessons learned from almost thirty years ago. A logical next step, now that I have completed my own refresher course with the rest of you along for the ride.

What seemed most pressing to explore was the nature of Good Work. Mainly because of my own constantly nagging ambivalence about whether my “day job” as a real estate broker qualifies as Good Work. My first essay - in which I asked Are You Ashamed of Your Profession - left me with some Yeah But questions. Last week I explored whether Work as Self-Development is Selfish, concluding that what makes me uneasy about my work is that despite it being good for some, it can have collateral consequences that are not good for others, no matter how much consciousness and professionalism I bring to the task.

And that brings me to my next question. Yeah, but - what if I am doing honest work in service to others and growing personally, but it is not the work I am meant to be doing? If I am fortunate enough to have choices, how do I figure out the real purpose of my life?

I wonder where it comes from, the pervasive idea that each of us is here on Earth to do something specific. In some versions, we came into this incarnation with a particular purpose, a personal legend, a destiny. (I donʻt know if we actually reincarnate, but I prefer that idea to the pressure of worrying that I was born with one shot to get it right). Millions and millions of us resonate with the idea that we were born with a destiny that will give our life meaning. Why else would The Alchemist, the little book I helped launch into the world, speak to people in all different countries and walks of life?

In other conceptualizations, all humans are on exactly the same path, creating karma and reacting to it until we finally evolve enough to break loose of the cosmic cycle. Thatʻs our shared goal and destiny.

In this Western privileged world, a world that allows us most of us reading these words the luxury of choosing a career path or paths, there is a whole industry ready to help us match our strengths, skills and interests with appropriate and therefore lucrative professions. There is another related set of professional coaches and self-help gurus encouraging us to see our work in the context of some individually self-validating Dream, one that our childhood self automatically knew, as I described in the poem beginning one of my posts. A Calling, a fixed, mysterious truth about who we really are meant to be.

What a horror show! Not only do I have to be doing Good Work, I have to be sure it is the Right Work. Otherwise, maybe I have to sell my flock of sheep and travel to find the treasure about which I have recurrent dreams. Or leave my job on Wall Street and experience disappointments and disillusionments, make new friends, find myself in the company of wise guides, gain some clarity, and finally return to where I started.

Not that I stayed there for long either. Maybe I still had not gotten my answer right.

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You may recall that in the final installment of my memoir writing, I met the Swiss Guy. A few years later, after we were married, one of my business associates invited him to a mens-only weekend sponsored by The Mankind Project. He came home with a weirdly anthropomorphized animal name and a personal mission statement. I vaguely remember which animal (insect, actually) although not the importantly descriptive adjective; and that the mission statement had something to do with healing others. The irony is that the purpose of the menʻs group work was to provide support for the men to heal themselves. The Swiss Guy opted not to continue with the difficult work of his own healing, which was ultimately the reason we are no longer married. I do not doubt that his mission had to do with healing. Perhaps all of our personal missions do. Thatʻs one way to look at the common thread between the worldʻs great, enduring spiritual traditions.

I wonder if I did a poll of my readers, right now, the 200 or so of you mostly-silent lurkers who read these each week, how many of you could say with confidence that you know, can state without hesitation, your personal mission, your destiny, your Big Dream. And if you can, do you feel you are fulfilling it? I empathize. Not easy, either part of it.

I might make fun of how people, so many people, make money, a lot of it, off coaching and books and workshops and inspirational posters about finding your mission and living your Dream - but thatʻs just my nervous tic. Fundamentally I know without a doubt that having a sense of purpose, a “why,” a calling, is a good thing. The journey we make in fulfillment of that mission heals us. That guiding star inspires us and orients us in the face of lifeʻs confusion and challenges. It calls us to serve and it calls us to grow and it calls us to persevere.

I also think that last weekʻs Maya Angelou quotation applies. Maybe we start with a vague sense of our calling, and we do what we know how to do. Then, over time - back to the idea of work as self-development - we grasp a fuller sense of our calling. And then we do better, work and live in ways that are more faithful to our commitment to fulfill our personal destiny.

I know I am closer to that articulation for myself than I have ever been, and I shared it in various ways throughout the installments of memoir. Here is the version I wrote almost 19 years ago, the first morning I woke up on Hawaiʻi Island with the intention to make this home. It is one that resonates for me today.

6 Feb 2005 - Keauhou

This morning I woke first at 5:30 am

Listening to the sound of the ocean

Thought here is who I am, a traveler between worlds,

a shape shifter, traveler and translator in search of and in service to wisdom.

Wisdom = knowledge of right relation which reveals right action.

My journal entry continued, quoting a book review in the Society for Organizational Learningʻs magazine Reflections, a review I was reading as the airplane landed at Keāhole the previous evening:

Presence ends with a powerful line:
”If we find our place, we will find our purpose.”

I concluded:

Seems like Iʻve found the place where I know who I am - now this week I can allow the purpose for being that to unfold.

Chicken skin. Goose bumps. Thatʻs how I knew and know this is it.

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Writing memoir made me feel vulnerable. Sharing this makes me feel doubly so. Hey friends, do you want to share too? What is your mission or personal legend, and how did you figure it out? Please, letʻs keep this a “safe space” if anyone does. Go ahead in the comments. And please feel free to share this post and these questions.