Pablo Picasso once observed, “The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.” In all fairness, there’s some debate about who actually said this, but the notion of Pablo sipping tea, hands stained with paint, waxing prophetic in Castellano feels romantic to me, so we’re going with that.
In any event, I’ve been thinking about purpose a lot lately.
Twenty eighteen was unquestionably the single most challenging orbit of my entire forty-three years. And it’s got some serious competition: emergency dental surgery when I was 2 years old; a 1985 cycling accident that nearly took my right arm and required two excruciating surgeries to fix; a massive overdose in 2007 that killed me for just over 3 minutes and left me in a coma, followed-up by a divorce in 2008 that sent me spiraling back into several more months of powdery, self-destructive depression. The list is longer than I care to admit.
The concept of bone fida true purpose didn’t exist in my universe until another round of addiction landed me back in the hospital–twice–and finally in-patient rehab in early 2018. Despite my deep affinity for learning, it’s apparently not always my strong suit.
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