(photo credit: Sumita Sinha)

I have been listening to many inspirational speakers as the grey skies of winter, tiredness and a series of strange incidents try to put a depressing shade to my life.  I have been calm, reflective and quietly bemused.  Listening to the these speakers helped to put things in perspective, find a balance and be inspired.  One of the things I heard from Marianne Williamson (she, whose quote about not hiding yourself is of often attributed to Nelson Mandela) was about life purpose.

I heard this sentence, “If you have life, you have a purpose.”  True and so profound. How often do we think about our failings and compare ourselves to others?  Yet our own unique life is waiting within- all full of purpose.  We don’t have to be young, beautiful or thin or rich to be of purpose.  The Universe does not create without purpose.  Even if we are old, disabled, ill, or whatever- as long we are alive, we have a purpose.  What is that purpose?  That is something we have to find ourselves.  And if we are willing to look, we can surely find it.  To waste our valuable life hours, comparing ourselves to others or envying others, is a slander of our own beautiful and unique selves.  But remember purpose is NOT one’s career.  Purpose is about our calling, our passion and our special talents whatever those may be- baking a cake, putting up a beautiful Christmas tree, writing a research thesis, singing, dancing, making others smile- and being ourselves.  No one can give us our purpose.  We have to find it ourselves.  Thanks to the person who wrote, “we are here to create a purpose for life” on that window of a boarded up building which I can see from where I work.