In numerous classes, I have asked my students, “What is your unique purpose here on earth?” Without fail, their first response is “To love.”
“How wonderful!” I respond, “I believe to love is everyone’s mission here on earth and what flavor of love are you here to experience?”
Love is like ice-cream. It comes in a lot of different flavors. You can get different textures of ice-cream, created from different kinds of ingredients. You can get gourmet, designer combinations or plain vanilla. You can get a simple single scoop ice cream cone or order a super delux sundae. So what flavor, what style, what uniquely you ice-cream combo gets you jazzed?
Are you a go out and change your counrty by becoming a politician who believes in preserving the earth and the family kind of ice-cream person? Or are you a dedicate my life to home-schooling my children to be caring, responsible, intelligent people kind of ice-cream person?
Are you a counsel underprivileged folks to break through barriers to create satisfying, meaningful lives for themselves kind of ice-cream person? Or are you a create a multi-million dollar business promoting technological advancements to improve planetary quality of life kind of ice-cream person?
The way you most enjoy being of service to others is a big key to discovering more about your soul purpose. It is in giving and receiving our love that we experience the greatest satisfaction and one of the best ways to give and receive is through our service.
Notice that none of the examples I have mentioned above are just about a job – they reflect a quality of life we are imbuing on the planet through our service work.
If the way in which we are providing service to others is not satisfying to us, then we are not in our best alignment with our purpose. Maybe we are in the wrong type of job completely. Maybe we need a new environment in which to work. Maybe we need to look at the lessons our work is asking us to learn about ourselves. Or maybe we just need to become clearer about the quality of life we wish to create and then determine the job, career, or means through which we want to instill that quality or flavor of love.
Finding our flavor(s) can be a lot of fun. You might be able to describe it in a few words. It might be more like a feeling than a thought. Best of all, it is a way we live when we just can help ourselves. We simply have to live the love that is within us.
When I say Martin Luther King, do you get a sense of his mission? How about Mother Teresa? Peace Pilgrim? Mahatma Ghandi? The Dalai Lama? Erma Bombeck? John F. Kennedy?
When we look at people who have a strong sense of purpose, their love and spirit seem to flow from the pours of their soul. Each of the above individuals did their work differently, yet each of them lived from the very center of their being, using the best of their skills, giving the best they had to give.
Our soul purpose transcends religion, cultural barriers, and race. When living our soul purpose we are coming from a core that resonates for many other people as well as ourselves. It sits in the center of the best humanity has to offer.
In living out our soul purpose, we get to ask ourselves, where and how we most feel alive in our acts of service. Do we love to teach, heal, care for, debate, parent, arbitrate, discover, write, dramatize, organize, conceptualize, paint, supervise, calculate, minister, enhance, etc.
Most of us are multi-talented, so determining one flavor of love is likely to be a waste of time. But discovering which of our talents we enjoy the most and seem to make the biggest difference give us indicators about how we can best spread love around the world. Knowing what we are passionate about, compelled to talk about, and even more importantly – compelled to do something about give us clues about what we are here to express and accomplish – our unique, significant contribution.
Are we here to love? Well, I like to think so. What flavor of love are you?
