DISCOVERING PURPOSE

Purpose is the reason for which something is done, created or for which something exists. It is also defined as a person’s sense of resolve or determination. The Webster dictionary for English puts it this way: purpose is the reason why something is done or used, the aim or intention of something, the feeling of being determined to do or achieve something and lastly what a person is trying to do or become. It is very unfortunate to note that some people don’t even know why they are here on earth in the first place, they think that all there is to life is just to exist and die when it is time; that is quite disheartening. When questions like what are your dreams and visions in life are being asked, most times these questions meet much unprepared answers. Unprepared in the sense that the persons to which these questions were directed to, have no answer because they have no clue why they are here in the first place, some even think that they are biological accidents. All I am saying is that no one is a biological accident and for every one of the over seven billion persons on the surface of the earth there is an assignment, but it is your responsibility to find out what it is and that is the purpose of the this article/teaching in the first place, because some people don’t even know how to identify purpose in life even though they are keen about it and that will lead me to our next point of discussion.

AREAS OF PURPOSE

There are numerous areas in which one can serve great purpose and they include:

Talent and Gifts: In my life time, I have seen a lot of gifted and talented individuals, who have the capability to naturally excel in what they are really good at. Let me buttress my point further, the reason why some comedians don’t struggle to do comedy is because it is the area of their gift/talent, in other words find out that one thing you are very good at, that even if you are not being paid for it, you still enjoy doing it because it gives you so much pleasure (I mean in the positive) and do it well, that is a purpose you are serving. Why someone like Fela Durotoye excels in speaking is because he is a gifted talkative, he discovered it, packaged it and is using it for the greater purpose of mankind while earning a living out of it; that is purpose. You are so uniquely crafted that there is something only you can do better than others with ease and flair, find out that one thing and do it well, in the words of Martin Luther King Jr.

”… And when you discover what you gonna be in life, set out to do it as if God Almighty called you at this particular moment in history to do it, and just don’t set out to do a good negro job but do a good job than anybody could do, set out to do a good job, and do that job so well that the living, the dead and the unborn couldn’t do it any better, like Shakespeare wrote poetry, like Michael Angelo painted pictures, like Beethoven composed music.”

Interests and Passion: A lot of times, we become interested in a particular field of study or in something so much that it becomes our reality and that could be an area of purpose. Phillip Emegwali became so keen in calculations so much that he was teaching his teachers Calculus while still a secondary school student and was nick named Calculus and of course that passion took him to study abroad such that his invention the connection machine could perform 3. 1 billion calculation in one second, the internet we know today the internet was born as a result of his immense contribution, little wonder the Sun called him the unsung hero of the internet. As our faces and thumbs prints are different so our areas of interest differs, find that one thing you are genuinely interested in or passionate about, who knows you might just be the person that will bring about the cure to Cancer the world have been waiting for. The Wright brothers: Wilbur and Orville got so passionate and interested in man’s ability to fly such that on the 17th of December, 1903 that dream became a reality, from Kaduna where I currently reside to Lagos by road, takes between 10 to 12 hours, but by air it is 45 minutes. I can see the look of surprise on your face. That is what discovering purpose can do for mankind.

Solving Problems: I know some people find it difficult to believe when it is said that problems in most cases are blessings in disguise, but they actually exist because solutions exists. Do you know you were born for such a time as now to solve a problem around you? That is why it baffles me how people complain so much about problems that they don’t feel responsible to create solutions to these problems. A country like Nigeria is blessed with so much problems and the solutions therein are numerous, but instead of solving these problems to making the society a better place and making money from solving these problems, its citizenry have become experts in analyzing and magnifying the problems so much that they fail to see that these problems exists because as citizens they have failed to do the needful and as such faults the government of the day for whatever they experience even for the blockage of their drainage with their own waste. No wonder it said that the wealthiest place on earth is the grave yard because there you will find songs that were never sung, books  that were never written, business ideas and solutions that are lying fallow.

Helping Others: Aside solving problems, helping others can be such a great purpose that most people tend to overlook. Teachers are meant to help their students get educated and by so doing are fulfilling purpose and contributing their quota to nation building. Bill Gates wanted making the use of computer such a pleasurable experience and decide to contribute his expertise in helping us navigate through our PC with ease and you know the story today. A lot of people ask me what we do at Beacon Media and Communication Services and I say to them, we are a business established to help other business excel and as they excel, we also excel. Does that sound like purpose? Whatever gift you are blessed with, is not for your own enjoyment but for the service of mankind that is why you will do yourself a great disservice and generations unborn when you refuse to discover your purpose, live your dream or live up to your full potential. When you work and discover purpose someone once said, you are fulfilling your part of the earth’s furthest dream that was assigned to you when that dream was first born.

Having said all of these I need you to understand that finding and fulfilling purpose in life is a matter of choice and the right attitude. Only you can stop yourself from fulfilling purpose, I trust you will make the right choice.  

2nd March, 2017

08:57am

References

https://airandspace.si.edu/exhibitions/wright-brothers/online/fly/1903/

http://www.math.buffalo.edu/mad/computer-science/emeagwali_philip.html