“A writer – and, I believe, generally all persons – must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.”
Jorge Luis Borges
It seems like I have been searching for a purpose my entire life. At 44, I still feel like I haven’t found mine yet and until recently, that fact brought me to the brink of despair and the greyness dusk of suicidal ideation. After all, if there is no purpose to one’s life, no one thing that forces you out of bed each and every morning, no matter how dreary the day – what is the f*cking point of remaining alive?
Perhaps the winter is not the best time to ruminate on such things. Here, steeped in dark, rainy days and struggling with illness for the last two months, it is easy to give in and give up. The mind desperately cries out for the comforting embrace of an empty page, but the hands are two weak, the heart is silent and broken, and the body is simply too tired for anything other than sleep.
And sleep – the endless kind – becomes more tempting.
Then one day, I felt a little better, and I sat at my father’s old desk, opened my journal, and wrote for an hour. Writing is not a panacea, but it does create order out of the chaos of my mind. And I realized – for the first time – that maybe I don’t need to know my purpose. At least, not as either the world or society or the Church define it. And therein lay the heart of the matter.
I spent over 35 years of my life searching for that one thing that would define me. The one thing that I could give my life to. From an early age, I had been taught and pressured to find and commit to this one thing as soon as I could. And if I didn’t find it by a certain age, I was doomed to wander aimlessly through life.
What a horrifying thought! What absolute bullshit!
If I do have a tangible purpose, it is fluid. Right now, I am meant to take care of my elderly parent. Once that role is over, I will discover a new one. For now, I am learning to let go of past expectations – real or imagined. My purpose today, in this moment – the only moment I am promised – is to write and take care of myself.
A member of the Water Street Writers, Mikaela D’Eigh is a writer, poet, and lover of Scotch. She lives out in the country with two Egyptian gods disguised as cats, a herd of cows, and a flock of wild turkeys. Check her out at La Belle Dame Merci and on Medium for more articles, poetry, and shenanigans.
mikaeladeigh.com 