Purpose is Passé
Detailed in the excellently written 2008 investigative article by Wired’s Joshuah Bearman, we discover the details surrounding the exfiltration of the “Canadian Six” after the 1979 Iranian seizure of the US embassy in Tehran. The entire drama plays out like a movie, which of course it would later become.
In the 2012 movie, Argo, Ben Affleck and company bring to life the events which unfolded over the course of almost three months, beginning with the storming of the embassy on November 4th and culminating in the January 27th rescue of six American diplomats who had been hiding in the care of British and Canadian diplomats, after initially evading capture.
It may seem strange, but this is the movie which often comes to my mind when I think of the journey that brought Chewey into my life.
After the end of the Chinese communist revolution in 1949, the new reigning communist party (CCP) set out to demonstrate an end to the wealthy class by eliminating luxury items. At the time, the Shih Tzu had been considered a symbol of wealth in China, and so it was determined that the entire breed would be exterminated. This extinction effort nearly worked, as almost all Shih Tzus met their demise at the hands of the CCP. In an Argo-esque operation, an Englishwoman living in China at the time, Lady Brownrigg, was able to find, hide, and eventually exfiltrate a few of the Shih Tzus to the United Kingdom. It was during World War II, while stationed in allied countries, that Americans were first introduced to the breed, with some soldiers being able to bring some of the dogs home, and thus the Shih Tzu first stepped paws upon The New World.
As I watch Chewey now, attempting to eat a sock he’s found in my daughter’s room, I try to imagine what this dog’s original purpose was. A little digging brought me my answer, and while it wasn’t to wreak havoc on our wardrobes, the truth is actually not that far removed from this activity.
Unlike most dogs who were bred for work, hunting, activity, or said differently, a purpose, the Shih Tzu was bred for….well, nothing at all.
Historians believe that the Shih Tzu, originating from Tibet but most commonly associated with China, was bred to simply be a companion to its owner. As Chewey decimates my daughter’s tube sock, I can’t help but believe this to be anything but false, but as I think of the totality of his life so far, I can’t help but believe this to be anything but true.
He does very little around the house, save for remove each of his dozens of squeaky chew toys from his three, yes three, full toy boxes. He has been highly resistant to my, admittedly feckless, training style. The other day, in a preview of what was to come, I was walking through the park with Chewey in tow, when I felt a sudden heaviness to the leash I was guiding him with. Turning back to investigate, I see Chewey, with all four of his legs spread out. The mystery weight was due to the fact that I was now dragging him on his tummy. I’m unsure just how long Chewey would stay at the park if I let him, but I’m certain it would be well past his curfew.
But despite all of these minor irritations, what he does better than most….he loves. He’s got one true purpose, and that is to love me. As far as purposes go, I can think of many worse.
This, of course, got me to thinking about what my purpose is in this life. I suppose it’s the sort of existential question that so many humans preoccupy their minds with. In fact, getting lost in identifying one’s purpose can cause debilitating anxiety.
Then I listened to a thought-provoking podcast by Stanford’s Andrew Huberman titled The Huberman Lab. In his 33rd episode, Humberman interviews Dr. Anna Lembke, author of Dopamine Nation (and also one of several experts interviewed in the must-watch Netflix documentary “The Social Dilemma”). Answering one of Huberman’s questions, Dr. Lembke suggests that the pursuit of finding our life’s passion (purpose) can not only be an elusive endeavor, but one that can actually be detrimental to our mental health. I’ll link the full podcast here, but the excerpt that I think is particularly relevant to this post comes around the forty minute mark:
LEMBKE: “So I think that one of the big problems now that's very misguided about this idea of finding your passion, it's almost as if people are looking to fit the key into the lock of the thing that was meant for them to do… and then everything will be wonderful…and that you'll have all this great success. And here's where I really think the answer lies. And I really, really believe this. Stop looking for your passion and instead look around right where you are. Stop distracting yourself, look around right where you are, and see what needs to be done. So not ‘what do I want to do?’, but what is the work that needs to be done, and more importantly, it doesn't have to be some grandiose work. Like does the garbage need to be taken out, right? Is there some garbage on your neighbor's lawn that someone threw there, that you could actually bend over and pick up
and put into the garbage can. Look around you. There is so much work that needs to be done that nobody wants to do. That is really, really important, and if we all did that, I really think the world would be a much better place. And this is what people who have severe addiction, who get into recovery, realize. They're like, it's not about me and my will and what I'm going to will in my life or in the world. It's about looking around what needs to be done. What is the work that I am called to do in this moment? Which also is incredibly freeing because I don't have to search for the perfect thing. There's a lot of burden now on young people, that they have to find that perfect thing, and until they've found that perfect thing, they're going to be miserable. You don't have to do that. Look at the life you were given, look at the people around you, look at the jobs that present themselves to you and do that job simply and honorably, one day at a time, with a kind
of humility. I think this is really what's so striking to me about the wisdom of people in recovery. There's this incredible humility that comes out of that experience. You feel so broken, so ashamed, but you pick yourself up one day at a time and you build a life that's around what can I do right in this moment, that might benefit another person, and thereby benefit me.”
This got me to ponder just how overrated purpose and passion actually are…
Everything Lembke says above is verifiably true in my life. Once a week, while I was in rehab, our entire group of men would drive off from our treatment facility and into the neighboring town. Our destination? A small church that ran a food bank for those in need within the community. Twenty recovering addicts would descend upon this food bank and do “jobs” that would range from helping people to their cars to bagging groceries, for two hours each week. I can tell you that of the four weeks I did this, each time I left that church feeling better about my life than I had at any point in the prior two years.
So what keeps me from doing this now? Apathy, to be sure, but often it comes down to self-pity and a self-proclaimed lack of time. It was the “lack of time” claim that felt particularly hollow to me, and upon further examination of my life, I realized just how compulsive my need for distraction had become. This distraction was served all-too-conveniently to me in the form of a smartphone or tablet. And I, as it would appear, am not alone in this battle for our attention.
Americans, on average, look at their phones a little over four hours per day. Social media makes up two and a half hours of that time. That’s an annual total of 1,460 hours spent on our phones, or 17% of an entire year. If you remove the average sleep time of six hours per night, that percentage jumps to 22%! That’s almost a quarter of our waking hours spent on a phone, and I most certainly fall within that average.
And this trend is likely to continue or perhaps worsen. Gen Z (those born between 1997 and 2012 or 12 to 27 year old’s) spend an eye-popping six hours on their phones per day. Again, removing sleep hours, that equates to a third of their day spent looking at a portable screen.
In Jonathan Haidt’s horrifying book, “The Anxious Generation”, he neatly summarizes the deluge of alarming new data, which is beginning to show an unquestionable link to phone use and mental health issues such as anxiety and depression. The stratospheric increase in these disorders among Gen Z users is quantifiably traced to the beginning of the launch of smartphones, and a variety of social media apps, in the late 2000’s.
By contrast, according to recent data compiled by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, only 30% of Americans volunteer, despite the dire need in a variety of organizations meant to help others. In that same study 73% of Americans believe that volunteering is more important than ever in a post-Covid society. Of the 30% who do volunteer, the average number of hours spent per year doing so is approximately 52, or roughly 2,700% less than the time we spend looking at our phones.
So most of us seem to agree that volunteerism is needed, and it’s risible to suggest we don’t have the time. We now know that the more time we spend on our phones, the more we put ourselves at risk of doing damage to our mental health. Do we need an additional incentive to volunteer?
While the mounting evidence points to a decrease in our mental health the more we give our time away to our phones, a recent study conducted by United Kingdom researchers, published in 2020, shows the inverse when it comes to volunteering.
In the study, people who had volunteered were more satisfied with their lives and rated their overall health as better. For skeptics, like me, the Washington Post eviscerates any sardonic rebuttal from those who assume that volunteers are likely already happy, hence the reason they volunteer to begin with, by writing: “the researchers found the same results even when they accounted for participants’ initial levels of well-being before they started volunteering. In other words, people who (just) started to volunteer became happier over time.”
Narcotics Anonymous talks a lot about the concept of a “Higher Power”, which immediately conjures the image of religion, a God, etc…
But I like this definition by Chris Elkins of drugrehab.com:
“A higher power is something greater than us. For many people, God is a higher power. For others, a higher power isn’t associated with religion or a deity. It’s a connection that we share with all living things. Some people don’t try to understand their higher power. They believe humans can’t comprehend it. Regardless of what a higher power is to you, having faith in a higher power can benefit your recovery.”
My higher power is God, though I readily admit that I am one of the humans who cannot comprehend what God is, other than love. Nevertheless, shortly after I discharged from rehab a year ago, I decided to read one chapter a day from the book “Jesus Calling”. Each morning, before I try to do anything else in my life, I’ll read the passage of the day, which begins with something Jesus would be saying to the reader.
The passage I read yesterday was this:
“Try to view each day as an adventure, carefully planned out by your Guide. Instead of staring into the day that is ahead of you, attempting to program it according to your will, be attentive to Me (Jesus) and to all I have prepared for you. Thank Me for this day of life, recognizing that it is a precious, unrepeatable gift. Trust that I am with you each moment, whether you sense My presence or not. A thankful, trusting attitude helps you to see events in your life from My perspective.”
When I awoke yesterday, I had all sorts of big plans for the day, everything from hiking, to grooming Chewey, to packing up the condominium I will soon be moving out of. But shortly after I read the above I received a text from Biraj (my experience with Biraj can be read here). He had taken a fall in his apartment, and needed someone to take him to an emergency room for fear of a broken rib. So I spent the morning with Biraj, in our local hospital.
Obviously this wasn’t the plan I had for my day, but the opportunity to help Biraj turned out to be the the most important thing I could have imagined doing with my time. I got to learn more about him, his journey to America, his family, and his outlook on his condition. We laughed and we smiled, we cried and we shared pictures of our loved ones. After I drove him back to his apartment, got him situated in a comfortable resting position, and said my goodbyes, I sat in my car for a moment before starting it. It was during this brief moment of quiet, contemplating everything I had done for Biraj over the last few hours, when it became abundantly clear to me that nothing I had given him would ever equal what he had just given me.
I love the bumper sticker that reads: Lord, please help me to be the person my Shih Tzu thinks I am.
Chewey has found his purpose in life. I hope to find mine one day, which is to say I hope I stop looking for it and just start emulating the man Chewey believes me to be. I think I’ll start by looking around and seeing what needs to be done; there’s plenty.
