PURPOSED PERFECTION

When we try to avoid realities through pursuit, we create alter-realities that stand in the way of full expression, mastery and advancement.

Today, we have people who are being sold on a life of purpose—which is not untrue. However, this life is erroneously suggested to be one serenaded by destination-lust. Where the very nature of your pursuit is tied to a lust you’ve nurtured of the destination. Destination-lust is basically an unhealthy fixation on a destination rather than the journey. This lust, prevents us from factoring in the various moving parts of the journey as well as truly experience actualization because of its destination-biased nature.

This destination-lust turns our desire for purposeful living to something more cynical. When we say we are ‘looking for purpose’ or seeking to ‘pursue a vision’, the nature of this perspective already produces a problem that needs urgent intervention. This is because what we are actually saying is, ‘my life is not good enough (usually based on what you see) and so I need to look for something missing that looks like grandeur to escape this life I have’.

This perspective is more about escaping perceived mediocrity than embracing potential transformation, trapping us in a cycle of continual dissatisfaction.

If you seek purpose to bypass pain and actual occurrences in your life, you can only numb the pain when engaged in fulfilling work but get right back into its claws once your cause is accomplished. This is why purpose should not be guised as performance. Purpose should be an experience of self-actualization and growth, not merely a performance or an escape.

This perspective of purpose often leads us down the path of least resistance to create present peace and in-the-moment prosperity. The challenge with this is that it actually affords us the experience we seek in the moment but not sustainable enough for the long haul. Hence, we start to manufacture the same motivation continually. ‘When I don’t like how I feel about my current pace or life outlook, I find something else to cover this feeling’.

You become caught up in an endless high. Where, you have to feel a certain way to be sure you are on the path of purpose. Thus, the pursuit isn’t meaning nor purpose but perfection, an idealized sense of fulfillment carved out of what is seen rather than out of your being. We seek to avoid reality and to experience some form of pleasure that comes with superiority and self-importance. Where the life you willfully chose becomes your benchmark for judgement for the life and experiences of others.

Because the good of this path is noticeable and appreciated by all, it is easy to evade the gross consequences of its experience. Then, you are left alone in seasons where reality sets in and it’s like your world comes crashing down. You question everything, nothing makes sense and you feel the need to burn it all down.

But, guess what? You lack the courage to do so because you are in a chokehold of the image you’ve created and the perception people may have of you. So, you manufacture something else to keep you going. Still in the guise of purpose and within an illusion of vision but void of true meaning, compromising your essence and it’s form—You create another iteration to perform, to do and to acquire the idealized image of fulfillment you have.

Your image of possibility becomes like a drug out of the life you hate and seek to escape. Execution becomes like a hard drug you must take to survive. Seemingly noble but void of meaning and empty of your personhood.

This quest for impact on the surface looks noble and desirable. It’s a quest that should afford us the biggest buck for our effort. It suggests to us a life of bliss and meaning, of prominence and prosperity, of magnificence and momentum. And, while this isn’t far from the truth. The trap is in its pursuit. When purpose becomes a coping mechanism, an avoidance plot thus becoming a prison in disguise.

But of course, whatever is done out of nobility and desire is applauded. It’s like we are overcompensating for how terrible we feel on the inside and how much we do not like who we are and where we are. And so, we know the world honors results, we stay willing to get it and maintain it even if it’s at a cost. This cost, many get to find eventually but even more simply decide to live with the addiction because at least “nobody will find out”.

Purpose should ordinarily be a life of peace. However, this peace doesn’t suggest the absence of struggle. Yet, it’s nothing near peaceful for many. Maybe on the field? But not with themselves. The metrics and signposts that has been used to define the boundary of what purpose should represent is inherently flawed and rather than being, we try to out-perform.

You do everything but still feel like something is missing, celebrated but not content. It’s like a puzzle where the final piece is lost, not because it’s missing, but because it’s yet to be created by you. For purpose is not a pre-set destination, it’s a journey that evolves with every step we take, every decision we make, and every dream we dare to chase.

Disconnection and detachment from the world become signs of success to those deeply ingrained in this pursuit. They become so ingrained to the pursuit of this path that they sacrifice their authenticity and humanity at its feet. They crave a sense of superiority and self-importance, failing to explore depths of themselves and connection with others. Caught in a cycle of chasing an idealized image of fulfillment, they face continual moments of truth where the facade cracks, revealing the prison they have built for themselves.

Rather than confronting these truths, many numb their pain with aphorisms that suggests it normalcy. Things like ‘it’s a lonely and painful road’, ‘the path is hard’ - while these may be true, it almost always is an explanation to inflate the ego rather than investigate what lies beneath.

When others point out this inauthenticity, the criticism is often dismissed as envy or misunderstanding. It’s perceived as an attack from demons against their desired future. But these ‘demons’ are often the unacknowledged parts of ourselves, the shadow that follows us, whispering truths we’re not ready to hear.

The struggle, then, is not just with external forces or societal expectations, but with our own internal conflicts. It’s a battle between the image we’ve created for the world and the reality of our inner experience. The pursuit of purpose becomes a paradoxical quest where the more we chase perfection, the further we drift from the essence of who we are.

We shift from living truthfully for ourselves to performing for the world. Our journey becomes tilted towards the heights we can attain as opposed to the depths we can explore within. We fail to recognize that what we chase, runs but what we are energetically aligned towards, remains.

We often misunderstand the dichotomy within the idea of purpose and the potential pitfalls of what we may deem purposed perfection. This misunderstanding is why, even after achieving creative success, we still feel unfulfilled. It explains our continual drive for performance, to feel more accomplished. It’s akin to a fibroid—a growth nurtured under the mistaken belief of a child, only to realize later that it is something detrimental that needs to be removed.

It is possible to be pregnant with purpose as much as it is possible to be grown with purpose fibroids. The latter happens to be the case with purposed perfection—an exaggerated pursuit to achieve an ideal stance of perfection.

Purpose Fibroids

Fibroids seem harmless because they grow unnoticed until they cause discomfort and deliver alternate desire. The carrier of a fibroid never knows it is a fibroid until it reveals itself in pain. In fact, a woman can nurture this growth thinking it’s a baby until she realizes it is not.

This is true for purposeful performance where, we may nurture ambitions and desires under the guise of purpose, only to discover that they are not the progeny of our true selves.

Purpose fibroids would look different for different people. However, at its core is the unhealthy desire for purposed perfection, a rigid fixation on the destination rather than the journey.

For some, it is corrupted desire from their image or models of possibility where admiration becomes obsession. And, their desire for their model’s end becomes the obsession of their current endeavor.

In the culture, it is celebrated as magnificent mentorship and applauded as true discipleship. Yet, in reality it is dissonance with essence, enemy of progress and fibroid of purpose. It becomes so excessive that the relevance of a person is tied to the relevance of their model. That is, the degree of achievement and accuracy they can ever attain is congruent to the progression of those they mirror.

Their obsessive pursuit for “getting it right” stands in the way of them actually getting it right because the image of their pursuit is as flawed, uncertain and unsure as they are.

If grace and luck is on the side of this person, their image could make a sharp tilt that would shift them off trajectory and cause them to reimagine their pursuit.

This metamorphoses into the prison of borrowed passions. Where, the idea of what you have attributed to be purpose or mission is conjured from another, borrowed, to put lightly rather than self-derived. Your idea of what you are called to do is basically a remake of what you’ve seen and admired, aligning to the field of pursuit in belief that if you would stay focused, your experience or the illusion of the experience you perceived would be yours.

Hence, why we must be intentionally self-attentive to see for ourselves the why of our desires and the reason for our wants. For many, it is corrupted through imaging—what is seen. Which in reality is nothing related to the image but the intangible effect that is perceived. More like, you may desire the poise and prominence a person has and think what you desire is the thing they do. Because what they do is the material of how you could perceive such poise. Without recognizing this, you may lust after their process, path and current destination rather than paying attention to the intangible you perceived and how you can explore the depth of yourself to excavate it’s pureness.

We often don’t want what people have. We only want the experience, the feeling, the energy and the intangibles they manifest in that state of being. Erroneously, we think it to be what they have or what they do rather than who they are.

The Fibroid of Manufactured Purposes

The prevalent societal discourse around purpose, both on a religious and self-help level is largely flawed in its demonstration of a purposeful life. It exemplifies a goal-driven, “success-apparent”, and achievement-visible journey which takes out the necessity of meaning, consciousness and being.

It leads people into doing and further into the pressure of manufacturing purposes to feel and stay relevant. The challenge with this skewness is the decline in genius-level expression, authentic delivery and uncommon potential awakening.

Thus, people begin to manufacture ideas to create institutions out of necessity and a desire to be seen, heard and known as opposed to out of their world, genius and mastery. And then we wonder why we stay trapped in a sea of sameness? The answer is simple, too many people are more fixated on branding by finding what would make whatever they manufacture different as opposed to creating out of their difference.

I guess what I am implying is the inhumane arrest of our genius, difference and god-likeness. Manufacturing purposes to fit into the celebrated frame of the world, to keep up with our illusion of an end, and to exploit our destination-lust.

We have impossible ideas for measuring what purpose or purposeful work is that in no way offers the most significant aspect of the puzzle—GENIUS. We are constantly doing, unaware of how to BE. We are caught in the webs of what we want, disillusioned by the god we see in others yet failing in acceptance of who we are and the comfort of our genius.

To identify the fibroid of manufactured purposes is to critically self-examine and inquire “WHY”. What has necessitated your production? The reality is, because we would rather hide from ourselves, at first glance, we would give filler answers that massages our ego. But, I challenge you to look critically into all productive efforts to know why.. What has influenced your sight? From whose well have you drawn that water? Is it congruent? Is it pursuit? Is it meaning? Find out.

The Fibroid of Obsessive Performance

I love me a good executor! It’s a necessary ingredient for genius-expression and big-picture potential. However, it can also be a purpose fibroid where your obsessiveness with performance cultivated by your genius ability to execute stands in the way of expression.

Ever seen people who are largely executors? They never think..they just do. As long as it catches their eyes, their hands are on the ploughs. That’s the polarity of life—every virtue has its vice and every good thing has it’s corresponding evil. However, mastery is the ability to wield both to your advantage rather than letting it wield you.

Being known as a doer is commendable, but it’s detrimental if the need to perform dominates you. It could lead to constant action without the introspection necessary for true self-actualization. While not everyone prioritizes self-actualization, I believe this stems from the world we inhabit. The human psyche is wired to seek self-actualization—to evolve continuously and delve into deeper dimensions of meaning, mission, and mastery.

The challenge arises when this drive for self-actualization becomes entangled with an obsessive need to perform. This need can overshadow our deeper quest for meaning, turning our lives into a checklist of tasks rather than the experience of being.

For many with this fibroid, purpose is like a to-do list as opposed to an experiential project—where it’s not merely about the achievement but the experience.

This is the challenge with most “before and after” content. It gives credit to the after which in reality is only the obvious representation of the nuances that created the result.

The real test, then, is finding balance. How do we honor our innate drive for self-actualization without falling into the trap of performance for performance’s sake? It’s about discerning when to act and when to reflect, when to push forward and when to delve inward.

It is being so much that doing is a byproduct.

It is in shifting from performance to consciousness; so much so that doing is not forced but required.

The Fibroid of Singular Purpose

There’s a lot to write on this particular purpose-fibroid and would require it’s own essay to unpack. However, it’s critical to establish the disease in the thought of a singular purpose.

On a fundamental level, it is inconsistent with universal principles and the very nature of the human psyche. Hence, when we speak of purpose as one thing and obsessively pursue after a singular thing, adamant to pivot where necessary, —it is from an ingrained belief that purpose has to be one thing you are to do. This isn’t just untrue, it is grossly misleading. For a woman is a wife as she is a mother and a sister as she is friend, serving diverse purposes in different contexts as peculiar to her current season.

Hence, what this would mean is—the only thing that stands singular is essence or Spirit—who you are at core (which is also subject to reinvention). However, it’s expression is varied and would continually recreate itself through seasons of transitions. It becomes essential that we only stay loyal to our missions and not our methods. Delivery is bound to change, expression would evolve.

It baffles me that even people who have evolved too many times are loud proponents of the “one-thing” theory. Someone who moved from being one thing to another within a short time frame suddenly has the authority to speak on purpose as one thing? The world we live in can be such a big joke.

My point is - the disease of singular purpose would rip you off true expression and potential awakening. Hence, the onus is on you to identify moments of transitions and rather than seeking to do one thing..seek to actualize. Make your life your project and journey towards exploration. It’s rich and rewarding.

Seek to know yourself more; your limits, your capacities and your potentials. Simply, self-actualize.

The Truth About Legacy Living

Legacy isn’t about what you leave but the life you lived and led. What we attribute to be the legacy of others is specific to us; it's what resonates with us personally, what stands out as significant in our own eyes.

As you read this essay, the "legacy" it leaves with you will differ from the impact it had on me as the writer, and possibly from the impact I intended it to have. This is the nature of legacy—it's personal and unique to each individual's experience.

Hence, it is sad that the pursuit of purposed perfection is often driven by the idea of leaving a legacy. This desire may lead us down a path of obsessive performance, manufactured purposes, borrowed passions and corrupted visions to “leave a legacy”. When in fact nothing that we do determines the exact legacy we desire to be left but who we choose to be.

Performance alone cannot forge legacy. It is lived through meaning, led through mastery, and left by experience.

Rather than fixating on the legacy you wish to “leave”, it is wiser to consider the legacy you currently live and choose to lead. Is it one of borrowed passion or one of genius expression? You make that call.

In a world where you can be anything, be GENIUS.

Let me know your thoughts on this essay.

Faith Ohio — Writer | Speaker | Thinker