Figmentations

In the context of “finding purpose”, if you find yourself impatient in your journey, or lost to the point of being stuck in your tracks, perhaps you have gotten hung up on the question of:  “What if I pick the wrong path?”

If that’s the case, I’d suggest:  why not try on different hats till you find the one that works for you, and consider the following…

Start by considering this cliché of a question:  “Is it better to have loved and lost, or to have never loved at all?”

One possible interpretation of this question is that your answer indicates whether you are the type of person who prefers to “seek pleasure” versus “avoid pain”.  The earlier often referred to as a “moving toward” phrasing while the latter being a “moving away from” phrasing.

I would think that some people might be quick to believe that the “moving toward” phrasing was better than the “moving away from” phrasing.

Yet, I wouldn’t label either half of the above question as positive or negative since, the interesting thing is, that even within each half of the above question, multiple interpretations of “good-ness” or “bad-ness” exist.

In the first half of the quoted question, i.e., “to have loved and lost”, you can take that to mean that either you appreciated the joy you were able to experience while it lasted, or you dwell on the disappointment of the loss.

In the second half of the above question, i.e., “to never have loved at all”, you can take this to mean that you regret what you missed out on, or, on the other hand, you are still hopeful for what is yet to come.

So, to reiterate….Trying on different hats until you find the one that works for you might not be a bad way to get yourself out of a stuck state.  But, how successful this strategy works for you clearly depends on how you choose to interpret the hat testing process.

Do you enjoy trying on new hats?

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For a list of all posts in this series go to:  Finding Purpose  (actual links will be posted as each post becomes live.)