Purpose Stereogram

Move close to the image and pull back slowly, there are words hidden in plain sight!

At the start of it (being our conscious lives), we may have asked questions. Why are things the way they are? Who are we? Why is the sky blue? I know that I tested my mother daily with questions easily answered by the internet today. The question many of us ask ourselves at some point concerns our life purpose.

What is my purpose?
Why am I here?

The question of purpose is addressed throughout human history. I am not going to attempt to write a simple post about the generality of purpose as this is way too complex. There are some simple practical ideas that we can work through concerning the concept of purpose which can help us in our daily lives. In other words, just a few things to think about.

• Is “purpose” a capital P or a lower-case p? When thinking of purpose, are we thinking about the purpose of our lives and/or the purpose of our moments? Some would say they are one in the same. I assert there is a difference.
• If we become conscious of moments or if we become purposeful in our moments, this lends itself to a different state of awareness. Many of us go through our lives asking or questioning our greater purpose, which I’d call the capital “P”, without attending to the moments of purpose which would be the lowercase “p.” We get lost in our day-to-day activities and we forget. There may be an event which rises beyond normal daily activities which triggers recognition or questioning of our greater purpose. While this within itself is a moment, it is only because it was driven by the event, not necessarily by an internal or conscious effort on our part.

• What if purpose is not an outcome but an activity? A friend of mine used to ask and state, “Why do I climb mountains?” “Because they are there!” Some of us measure the frequency or activity of actions but we don’t think about the overall outcome. Others look for the outcome and may not be concerned with what it takes to achieve it. If we do something just for the sake of doing it, what is the goal? What is the purpose? If there is no outcome, did we achieve our purpose? What if the outcome was simply the activity with no larger goal or outcome in mind? Does everything need to be tied to something we can see? Does everything require great clarity? Can doing “stuff” be enough?
• What if we can never see it?

What if we can never see it? I asked my son to look at a stereogram. It was a large image on a tablet. I moved the tablet around and asked him to bring it to his nose and back. He tried for a long time but couldn’t see the image. The image is right there in front of him, if he could only see it go from 2D to 3D! If he could experience it! It is just an image but when it moves to 3D something interesting happens. It is one thing but many right here in front of us. How many of us go through our lives seeing everything in 2D? How interesting is it to see the same thing from multiple perspectives? Is this the same with purpose?

What if we can never see it? Does this mean we have failed? What if our purpose stereogram never reveals the next dimension of our reality? Is this a negative thing?

What if seeing too much disrupts our purpose? If we consider some of the most brilliant minds in history, we may find their ability to see what others could not, may have impeded or impacted their personal sense of purpose. ( I wonder who is in this picture?) 🙂

Ask me if you are interested, I know you will recognize at least one of these people.

ANYWAYS.. My son has yet to see the image appear. Through his frustration, he shared that he is better off without seeing it. I think many of us feel this way about our purpose. We can just go through life without having to question if we have a purpose or not. We can also choose to create purposeful moments without having to bury ourselves in ideas of a purpose we may never achieve.

I believe the moments matter and if we can become aware and maintain awareness of our purposeful moments, we can see both the 2D and the 3D stereogram of our purposefulness with ease. It may also be possible to see what we have yet to imagine beyond 3D and for that we simply need to be open to the possibilities.

Hope you enjoyed this post!