There’s a Sufi story about Nasrudin searching for his keys under a streetlight.
A friend asks, ‘Is this where you lost them?’ Nasrudin replies, ‘No, I lost them in my house.’ ‘Then why are you looking here?’ ‘Because the light is better here.’
We search for purpose where it’s easiest to look—in careers, achievements, roles. Not because that’s where purpose lives, but because everyone else is looking there too.
10 Insights on Purpose
I.
From the moment we’re born, we’re taught what success looks like. Graduate, get a good job, climb the ladder, buy a house, start a family—follow the script and you’ll be happy.
II.
So we adopt society’s definition of purpose: career becomes identity, achievement becomes validation, and success becomes the measure of a life well-lived.
III.
We’re told to “find our passion” as if purpose is hiding somewhere out there, waiting to be discovered like buried treasure. So we search desperately—career tests, personality assessments, endless exploration—always looking externally.
IV.
Worse, since our purpose is externalized, we measure our purpose relative to others.
We compare—their success, their clarity, their apparent fulfillment—and measure our life against the highlight reels of their life, feeling inadequate by comparison.
V.
When purpose is externalized, life becomes anxiety. Every moment becomes a means to an end, even you become a means to your own ends—a tool for producing the success that will finally make you whole.
VI.
This creates a trap: we become dependent on external conditions that inevitably change.
The job ends, the relationship shifts, the achievement fades, and suddenly we’re lost again, scrambling for the next external anchor.
VII.
And in very Hegelian terms, every value, every purpose, and every desire contains its opposite.
Seeking Purpose confirms you feel purposeless.
Chasing Success reveals your emptiness.
Needing Achievement confirms your insufficiency.
Attaining your desire proves its emptiness.
VIII.
This is why “successful” people often experience the deepest crises.
They played the game perfectly and won—only to discover the prize was hollow. The external path worked exactly as promised, which revealed that it doesn’t work at all.
IX.
But here’s the grace in all this failure: when external purposes collapse, the real search finally begins.
The breakdown isn’t the end—it’s the breakthrough that makes authentic purpose possible.
X.
External Purpose will always fail because it was never yours.
3 Quotes
I.
“The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all.”
Kierkegaard
II.
“What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself.”
Maslow
III.
“The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are”
Joseph Campbell
1 Question
If everything external—your career, relationships, achievements, roles—was stripped away tomorrow, what would remain? Would you still have purpose, or would you have nothing?