Everyone's looking for their purpose like it's a destination on a map. They expect to find it — a moment of clarity, a sign, a calling that arrives fully formed and announces itself.
It doesn't work like that. Purpose isn't found. It's built, slowly, out of attention and experience and honesty about what actually moves you.
But here's what nobody tells you about the search: most of the time, what you're feeling isn't the absence of purpose. It's the presence of the wrong metrics. You've been measuring yourself against someone else's coordinates, and wondering why you never arrive.
I spent three years chasing what I thought purpose was supposed to look like. The clean story. The obvious trajectory. I watched other people and tried to reverse-engineer their certainty. It made me feel hollow in a specific, quiet way — the kind of hollow that doesn't show up at parties but surfaces at 2am when the performance stops.
Then something shifted. Not dramatically. Purpose doesn't arrive dramatically. It arrived the way most important things do — in the middle of an ordinary afternoon, doing something I didn't even know I cared about, until I noticed I'd been doing it for three hours and hadn't checked my phone once.
This is premium.
Full access to every article, every deep-dive, every guide. €10/month. Cancel anytime.
Get Premium Access →Already subscribed? Sign in on Substack