Purpose

This is, first of all, about Finding Purpose, both in career and life.  It’s about recognizing and understanding the Fundamental Principles or common denominators that not only control our attempts in Finding Purpose, but seem to me to pervade every day, every breath, every circumstance, unless one is sitting alone somewhere on a mountain top.  And even then one would probably still be thinking about them.

It’s also about Process.  Importantly, it has been through a path of discovery in both experience and observing the Road Signs in my life that these fundamental principles have come into sharper focus (leave it to a scientist to think of life as an experiment).  And more importantly, it has been through experiencing other people’s thoughts and cultures and reading on topics both similar and dissimilar (thus revealing our common Blind Spots) that has led through the other, little regarded process of discovery that involves rearranging and extending existing understanding and knowledge beyond conventional wisdom to be able to move toward a better understanding of these fundamental principles.  I trust you’ll find signs of that in what follows.

“Like a magnet, two poles lie at the ends of … success.  You can succeed by empowering others or you can succeed by exploiting them,”  (Daniel Grushkin, Businessweek, June 07, 2012).  This blog is also about empowering others, which we can accomplish once we are able to understand and act on our own empowerment.  As a bonus, it is also about recognizing the subtle signals and the small but real possibility of exploitation occurring at some level, either self-inflicted, experienced, or possibly inflicted on others.  In between these three is the possibility of turbulence.  As every good pilot learns, there is always turbulence so it is best to know how to recognize it in advance to be able to avoid it or at least minimize its effects.  Otherwise, one can end up grounded, one way or another.

There is an old story of a drunk looking for his lost keys in the dark.  He’s looking under a streetlight.  When asked if that’s where he lost them, his response was no, but the light was better there.

I realized that while looking for some keys to life, I also observed and collected most of these thoughts over far more years than I care to admit.  Only recently they all have begun to come together displaying themselves in various current events.  They appear interrelated, like a necklace of pop-beads.  Unfortunately, while a pop-bead necklace has no beginning and no end, this exercise must begin somewhere in order to make sense.  One has to start somewhere, because that’s where you have to start, but you start with the hope that the insights you gain will help further illuminate the darkness.

Thus, if you haven’t done so already, please start with the first entry.  It came to me under a streetlight.

By the way, “As an Amazon Associate I ‘can’ earn from qualifying purchases.”  I say ‘can’ as so far this has not happened, even though the things I include that are qualified are books that are Really Necessary Reading.  Thanks.