The Power of Purpose

I’m back!

Summer sabbatical 2025 was great. We enjoyed lots of cabin time with family guests, including our son, Bryan, along with his dogs, Rocky and Annabelle. Our son Daniel, who’s had a rough year, with four hospitalizations. Our daughter, Julia; son-in-law, Ryan; and granddaughters, Adalyn and Arlo, from Portland, Oregon. My sister, Janet, and her husband, Rob, from St. Louis; my brother, Paul, from Columbus, Georgia; our son-in-law’s mother, Ann, from Portland, Oregon; and three sets of nieces and their families from St. Louis.  It was a chaotic joy watching young cousins run amok and get reacquainted.

I even found time (I get up really early) to finish my new book, The Secret Within. Assuming all goes well, the book will be available in time for the Holidays. 

MJ and I are now back at the cabin, and things are quiet. I’m not going to say lonely, because the Spirits of summer guests are still among us. 

Autumn is just around the corner, and I am back to my regularly scheduled programming.

Thanks again for reading my posts!

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Life is punctuated by fleeting moments of fullness and beauty that sweep us off our feet. They are as unpredictable as shooting stars. Such moments brim with relationships and meaning. Yet, they elude our command. 

How does one put themselves in the right place at the right time to be smitten by life?

I’ve always been goal-oriented. That comes from Dad, who began quizzing me on goals and objectives when I was in grade school. Goals and objectives propel us forward, but don’t necessarily guarantee a life well-lived. 

A life well lived requires purpose, and I didn’t have one. I never even considered needing one until after I was thirty. The impetus was an executive retreat featuring Richard Lieder, author of the 1985 best-selling book, The Power of Purpose. Lieder made a compelling case for establishing a life purpose. I spent several months after the meeting reflecting on what mine might be, eventually landing on one that resonated. 

For the past forty years, my life purpose has been: To Enjoy a Meaningful Life.That’s not as easy as it sounds. Meaning speaks to our relationships and the contributions we make. True joy is not situational; rather, it is indigenous and capable of weathering life’s storms. That’s been the hard part. Our family has faced significant medical trauma with the declining health of our disabled son. We don’t know how many surgeries or hospitalizations Dan has had. We’ve lost track. There were four hospitalizations this year, and four months in various hospitals the previous year. Finding joy can be a daunting task at times. 

Shortly after establishing my purpose, I began keeping a journal comprised of reading notes and reflections related to its pursuit.  At the time, I believed the secret to fulfilling my purpose resided in the wisdom of the ages. I intended to glean this wisdom and create a personal rubric. Over the years, I built a library of philosophical and religious texts. The journal I kept grew to over a thousand pages. 

Ultimately, I found that the road to peace, through knowledge, was impassable. The secret to joy and meaning resides within us. This is the topic of my new book. Fleeting moments of bliss and life purpose aren’t as far removed from one another as I once thought. The secret is to get out of our own way, meaning letting go of neurotic thoughts that distract us from the beautiful moments of our lives.

This summer, I decided my purpose needed revision. Time was the impetus. Time is the name we give to change. It moves quickly because change is relentless. Twelve years ago, I googled my actuarial life expectancy and found I only had 24 years left. That didn’t sound like a lot of time, so I submitted my resignation at work the very next day. I’ve now burned half of my remaining actuarial lifespan. My new life purpose had to be a good one, because time is moving quickly. 

So here it is:  To fully live the best days of my life as they happen.

\That’s also harder than it sounds. It’s easy to spend too much time in one’s head. Thoughts remove us from the present moment, which is where the beauty of life occurs. Change (time) is a distraction. That’s because we are always thinking about the way that things might have been, or what we could’ve done, should’ve done, or used to do. None of that is meaningful. I love what the 14^th-century Dominican Theologian and mystic, Meister Eckhart, wrote about this: “Time is what keeps the light from reaching us.”  

Too often, beautiful moments in our lives slip by unnoticed because our attention is elsewhere. My new purpose focuses on correcting that. I intend on being present for the shooting stars of my life. Jackson Browne sums that up in one of my favorite songs:

“Keep a fire burning in your eye

Pay attention to the open sky

You never know what will be coming down.”

Do you have a life purpose? 

Establishing one and seriously pursuing it is a good way to find shooting stars!

I’ll close with the epilogue to my new book:

This Precious Moment

It was a perfect evening, the last night of summer for our sons, daughter, and granddaughters’ visit to the cabin. The entire family piled onto the pontoon boat to watch a fuchsia sunset paint the sky and water. Adalyn, soon to be five, believes in mermaids and jewel fish that bring polished rocks to the shoreline.  Her younger sister, Arlo, already has a great sense of humor, suggesting interesting times ahead; Beatles’ music played on the stereo. Adalyn snapped pictures of the stunning sunset; the rest of us captured the fleeting moment in our hearts. 

I recognized it immediately, not as a wistful memory but as a living presence. This moment, right here, right now, might be the most beautiful moment of my life.

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My new purpose is starting to take effect!

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Former blog posts can be found here by subject category and here chronologically. 

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My first book, Towards A Life Well-Lived, can be purchased by clicking this link. Proceeds from sales are donated to Peace In Schools, a Portland, Oregon-based organization that supports mindfulness training in high schools. 

Stay tuned for my new book, The Secret Within, which I expect to make available in time for the Holidays.