Living a Meaningful Life Without Purpose

To describe what this book is about would defeat its purpose since it is about living a meaningful life without purpose. Purpose is overrated, writes the author. What is it your business what purpose God or intelligent design or Darwin had in mind when the idea of you came up? What makes you think that your right to life hangs on some kind of particular task and that you were specifically hired to perform it? And anyway, if you know why you are here, what would be the point in you being here, altogether? Basically, you are here for the purpose of not knowing why. So deal with it.

We are indeed living very much in a purpose-driven culture that has all but robbed us of the gift of meaning and replaced it with the urgency of purpose. As a result, more and more of us are judging one another not for who we are but for what weve accomplished and for what sort of justification weve come up with for existing. Thus, people rarely ask So tell me about yourself. Rather, its mostly You got a card? To paraphrase comedian Jackie Mason, Everybody is handing out business cards, but the only ones making a living are the printers. The search for purpose becomes more urgent when we feel we exist by no choice of our own because when things get rough, there better be sufficient justification for being here that makes going through this shit worthwhile. On the other hand, when we focus on meaning rather than on purpose, we liberate ourselves from the constraints of the have-tos and breathe in the pristine gift of the moment and of each phase in the magic of our life unfolding.