Purpose Is Plural and Seasonal — and That’s Normal
There is no single true calling, no grand goal or purpose you’re supposed to find or pursue.
Purpose is plural and seasonal. It shows up in curiosity and in the roles you fill, and it changes over a lifetime. Moving between purposes or holding several at once isn’t drift or a failure of commitment. It’s the norm.
Feeling like you must name one grand purpose and feeling broken when you can’t is a cultural expectation worth rejecting.
The one-purpose myth is a cultural expectation, not a fact. I’m 73 years old, and I never found my “one purpose.” That’s the point.
The Script You Were Handed
I grew up under the assumption that everyone is supposed to have one overarching life purpose. The cultural script, “find your one purpose, then build your life around it,” is presented as the noble path. But a growing body of writing pushes back against it, calling it both false and paralyzing.
I never found one, and it caused real frustration when I was younger. Peace only came after years of lived experience gave me a pattern of multiple purposes to look back on.
The Course I Quit and Asked for My Money Back
If you feel like you have an overarching purpose, that’s fine, but most people don’t feel that way. There is nothing wrong with not having an overall purpose in life, and I think it is a mistake for leaders to try and force that.
There are several popular productivity courses that make this same cultural mistake. They assume there is an overarching purpose in people’s lives and push participants to identify it and write a statement that includes it. This same exercise is often repeated in spiritual and corporate retreats.
I’ve tried to follow their system to discover my purpose several times, but it never made any sense to me. I didn’t believe you could find a single overarching value or purpose for everything you did. Instead, I felt like those values or purposes would change over time, as they actually did in my life.
I became so frustrated with one course’s insistence on discovering the “overarching value” that I actually quit it and asked for my money back (the only time I’ve done that). I felt like it was a waste of time and was wrong-headed to assume that everybody’s supposed to have an overarching purpose.
What the Research Actually Says About “One Calling”
Anne-Laure Le Cunff wrote about this in her book Tiny Experiments, in which she says the “one calling” idea is a cultural fashion, not a fact of human nature.
“In recent years, society has been obsessed with purpose-driven careers grounded in the idea that we’re each put here to serve some unique calling.”
She argues that instead of being helpful, this approach often stifles personal growth. Le Cunff names the trap directly: chasing a single purpose crowds out the detours where the real growth happens:
“When we fixate on finding one singular purpose, we rule out the side quests that help us grow the most. Your life doesn’t need to follow predictable acts and arcs.”
Jordan Grumet, author of The Purpose Code, recently was a guest on the Art of Manliness podcast. He stated that searching for what he calls your big P purpose can be fruitless and even harmful, and that a better path is to embrace a life of little p purposes. His life has been a series of little Ps, and he doesn’t experience that as a consolation prize. He sees it as normal human behavior.
Purposes in Sequence: My Many Jobs Weren’t Drift
Purpose is often plural and layered. There is no one overarching purpose in my life. Rather, there have been individual purposes in different areas as I’ve gone through my life.
Sometimes these purposes have been in sequence, such as careers that replace each other. I was a minister, attended law school, and then became an attorney.
Purpose often arrives in layers, and each layer only becomes clear after you finish the last. David Deida wrote about this in his book The Way of the Superior Man:
“The next layer of your unfolding purpose may make itself clear immediately. More often, however, it does not. After completing one layer of purpose, you might not know what to do with your life.”
The average person has about 12 different jobs over a career. I’ve been a minister, a military chaplain, an attorney, a Judge Advocate in the military, a Sheriff’s Posse volunteer, a blogger, and a National Park Service employee and volunteer.
This isn’t drift. It’s the normal shape of life.
Simultaneous Purposes: How Roles Carry Their Own Purpose
I’ve also always had multiple purposes at once. Those are the different purposes that come with the different roles in my life, such as husband, friend, writer, hobbyist, etc.
As a part of David Sparks’ innovative Productivity Field Guide system, you’re taught to identify the different roles in your life. Next, you write Arete statements, or ideal behavior descriptions for each role.
Sparks explains purpose flows from the roles you fill, roles change over time, and the aim within each is Arete — excellence — not a finish line. Your roles list contains your multiple purposes, and the fact that they shift over the years is the system working exactly as it should.
The Three Engines That Actually Create Purpose
Looking back on my life, I see three engines of purpose: curiosity, problems, and roles.
1. Sometimes purposes come about just out of pure curiosity, pure interest. Sometimes it deepens into something I want to be fully involved in. Curiosity leads to purpose.
The first time I visited the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site, it connected to my past as a chaplain at Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota, where I used to visit Minuteman Missile launch control facilities. I learned that I could become a National Park Service volunteer tour guide.
I started going out to the site about once every two weeks, and I was hired part-time as a ranger over a winter. It was just an interest, but it led to volunteering becoming a purpose in my life.
2. Often purposes have developed from problems I’ve experienced.
For instance, I struggled with my own retirement early on. I read more about retirement, took a course to become a certified professional retirement coach, started a retirement blog, and do some coaching. It was a purpose that grew out of a difficulty that I was living with and wanted to learn more about and help other retirees with.
3. Another engine of purpose is roles. Those are the purposes that come built into being a husband, a friend, a writer, etc.
For example, under my role as a writer are these statements:
- I write about subjects that resonate with me with the aim of helping my readers reach their goals, answer questions, solve problems, and find resources.
- I continually seek to improve my writing.
- I write my own first draft and use AI to help me research, edit, and improve my posts.
All of these are purposes or goals that are a part of my role as a writer. I have different purposes appropriate to my other roles. Note that all of these exist simultaneously and will likely change over the years.
You Were Never Broken
The pressure to name a single overarching “big P” purpose can leave people feeling lost or broken. You’re none of those things.
Purpose is plural and seasonal, and a life made of many “little p” purposes is the normal shape of a human life.
Stop comparing yourself against a myth. The next time someone asks you to write your single life purpose on a worksheet, feel free to leave it blank.
Then go live the several purposes you already have.
Note: I wrote this blog post myself using my own words and thoughts for the initial draft. I used AI only to suggest headlines, section headings, images and text improvements.
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