Purpose and Life

Yesterday evening on Fox News, I saw the author of The Purpose Driven Life (made famous by the recent prison escape/murder spree/hostage-taking in Atlanta) and decided I wanted to blog it. Not much need. The General beat me to it and did a pretty good job at that.

Mr. Warren begins his book with a quote (with which he completely agrees) from the philosopher Bertrand Russell: "Unless you assume a God, the question of life's purpose is meaningless." Using that as his springboard, Mr. Warren wastes no time in getting to the heart of his thesis:

It's not about you.

The purpose of your life is far greater than your own personal fulfillment, your peace of mind, or even your own happiness. It's far greater than your family, your career, or even your wildest dreams and ambitions. If you want to know why you were placed on this planet, you must begin with God. You were born by his purpose and for his purpose.

The search for the purpose of life has puzzled people for thousands of years. That's because we typically begin at the wrong starting point-ourselves. We ask self-centered questions like What do I want to be? What should I do with my life? What are my goals, my ambitions, my dreams for my future? But focusing on ourselves will never reveal our life's purpose.

This is the worst kind of advice that someone seeking a purpose could be given. It is not from too much focusing on the self that people are left feeling empty, with lives that seem to have no meaning and never add up to anything. Rather, it is precisely because they never cared about their self in the first place.

He goes on further to say:

Your purpose isn't to do what anyone else intended for you; it's to find those things which genuinely make you happy and give you fulfillment. It's to discover a life of productive effort and achievement, and the pride which you'll earn from doing so. The moral purpose of your life is to be happy, to enjoy your life. This earth is so full of wonderful things, waiting for you to discover them. What are you waiting for?

Pardon the figure of speech, but: Amen! Read it all. It's pretty good.

I am happy to add that through an ARI mailing, I learned that on March 20th, there will be an injection of an antidote to this poison into the national bloodstream via cable television.

Ayn Rand was born on February 2, 1905 and the Ayn Rand Institute has hosted events to commemorate the 100th anniversary of her birth. As part of their centenary celebration, Peter Schwartz, chairman of the board of directors at the institute, spoke about Ms. Rand's book, "The Virtue of Selfishness." The book is a collection of essays on objectivism [sic] and the author's views on the importance of rights of the individual as well as the minimization of government regulation.

Of course, I strongly recommend this book.

-- CAV