A Search for Purpose

All of us as human beings have been programmed to do something later on in life, so this journey inevitably started ever since we were born. As an infant, we are under the complete control of other people (our parents), and we are subjected to grow up to their own standard of upbringing. Although personality traits are sometimes inherited, the child's mannerisms, behavior, and compassion are learned from home and from the company of friends.

Being a child born into this world, we are already in search of role models from the very onset of our development, starting from our speech, our accents, our eating habits, and several response to other stimuli. Our whole being starts to take shape within us, and in the presence of the people around us.

And then there is outside influence. When we are a kid, we may have encountered situations where we discover our desires by showing our parents what we want to possess. Most of the time, what we want is unreasonable so our parents do not give it to us. And the way we were trained on how to cope with the disappointment of not getting something speaks directly about the way we were affected by discipline.

The interplay between our desires and the discipline we have learned (from the home and in school) decides a portion of our personality, which is ultimately manifested in our behavior and our actions. By knowing our desires and  the unreasonableness of our wants, we learn to see what contributes to our ability to recognize which wants do we need, and which ones to postpone.

But it does not just stop there. There are more environmental factors that gives its affect to the philosophy of man. Factors like culture, race, geography, social status, and traumatic experiences have an impact in the way we process what happens to our daily lives. Some of these experiences may create resilience and build character if the stimulus is to be interpreted in a positive way, but other people may view these environmental factors in a negative way that create hatred in their heart and the desire for destruction.

In a way, how we react to what happens to us is vital to the way we cope on certain situations that warrant the use of ethical standards and a higher form of morality. Our superego plays an important role in rationalizing things to keep a hopeful attitude, a trait that can come abundantly in the belief that God is in control, no matter what.

All of these things, when factored together, becomes the determinant of our purpose. Many people tie it to a goal, and these goals are sometimes reenforced with the presence of awards that recognize achievements in several fields of endeavor. By doing so, to motivate people to achieve their dreams is to contribute to the fulfillment of a person as a fully human being.

Purpose is, indeed, a very personal thing, which differs in the way a person sees the world through the lens of his experiences. For many years, and even during the period of antiquity, humanity have searched the meaning of his existence first. His interest and curiosity in inquiry always stems from the way he conduct his affairs, and the natural sciences eventually developed as a way to solve humanity's own problems with the living world.

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Picture from Pixabay.