When I was much younger, after graduating from high school, I started thinking about college, trying to decide on my next move. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with my life. I had been successful in school, but now that I had finished all of that and graduated from high school … now what?
I wanted my life to be meaningful. I didn’t want to waste it, but I felt no clear direction about what to do next.
As I glanced over the degree plans and program offerings for several different colleges, it occurred to me that what I really needed to understand was Life. That’s what I needed to study, but I didn’t find any colleges offering major courses in the study of “Life.” That struck me as a big oversight. It seemed a bit odd.
There was an abundance of degree plans in the traditional arts and sciences, along with business and technical degree plans, covering almost every career you could imagine, but if a person wanted to go beyond preparing for a career and wanted to gain a deep understanding about life and what it is all about, I didn’t seem to be able to find any course of study that would meet that need. If I wanted to major in “Life,” there didn’t seem to be an established pathway for that.
To me, it seemed like a void that needed to be filled. After all, there may be innumerable career choices and many different training programs to help people prepare for those various career choices, but the one thing we all face is Life. Who and what will prepare us for this inescapable journey that we all face? How can we learn to live the best life possible in the short time that we are given?
Those thoughts and questions never completely left me. It disturbs me that so much of our attention and focus seems to go to things that do not really matter much in the long run—things that don’t have much real lasting value. Meanwhile, our most precious resource—time—is slipping away relentlessly; speeding us toward the end of our lives.
It reminds me of Jesus’ parable of the sower. After the seeds were planted, which were the priceless words of truth and life, many of these young seedlings were choked out by the thorns of daily cares and the pursuit of short-term wealth, so that these invaluable seeds bore no fruit in the lives where they were sown. Deep fulfillment in life was choked out by things of far less value that did not last.
It seems to me that we need to get a firm grip on the reality of our situations. It is vitally important that we each figure out which activities matter in our lives and which ones don’t. We must learn how to value what is most important in life and focus our time and our involvement on those things. But that is just the beginning.
Who am I? Why am I here? If life matters, how can I make the best use of my time here? Does my life have a unique purpose? How can I discover meaning and deep fulfillment in life?
Have you asked some of these same questions?
And even if you discover your purpose in life, how do you stay on track? How do you put together a workable plan that will enable you to fulfill your purpose? How do you overcome obstacles along the way? How can you avoid pitfalls and traps that have distracted and derailed so many others in pursuit of their dreams?
What I hope to do is put together a series of articles to offer some guidance that will help you choose the best paths for your journey through life. Together, we can learn more about what life is really all about, why we are here, and how to best use the time we have to fulfill our potential and achieve our purposes in life.
We’ll look at how to determine what really matters in life, how to begin discovering your identity and your purpose, and go on to live a life that is meaningful and fulfilling.
My prayer for you is that you quickly discover who you are and why you are here, and that avoiding distractions and pitfalls, you will run your race well, completely fulfilling your potential and accomplishing your purpose in life.
