Stop chasing purpose

Purpose isn’t something you find. It’s a finish line we made up and forgot we invented.

For most of my life, I thought purpose was something I had to earn. Something big. Something noble. A reason to exist that would make sense of everything and prove I was doing life right. I believed that without it, I’d drift. That I’d waste my time here. So I searched. Through job titles and side projects. Through journals filled with questions. Through books that promised to show me how to find my why.

But no matter how hard I chased it, it stayed just out of reach. Until one day, I stopped asking what my purpose was and started wondering why I felt so desperate to have one in the first place.

That question changed everything.

Because the truth is, purpose isn’t something you find. It’s something you name. When someone says they’ve found their purpose, what they really mean is—they chose to call it that. They gave meaning to something that mattered to them. And just like that, it became their purpose.

So purpose can be anything. A career. A cause. A moment. A child. A season of being present for someone who needs you. If it can be anything, it can be everything. And if it can be everything, then it’s not some sacred calling waiting to be uncovered. It’s a word we use when we’re trying to make sense of what we care about.

That doesn’t make it empty. It makes it human.

It means we get to stop tying our worth to whether we’ve figured it all out. It means we can live without the pressure to make every part of our life add up to something impressive.

You don’t need a grand purpose to live a good life. You don’t need a mission statement to be whole.

You don’t need something as vague as purpose to find your life.

You already have everything you need. The only problem is: you don’t see it yet.