What a Sleepness Night Taught Me About Passion & Purpose

If you are one of those people who consistently have trouble sleeping, I have much empathy for you today.

Normally (and this drives my wife nuts) as I lay down in bed, my eyes start closing and I may even be asleep before my head hits the pillow.

I have a FitBit that records how long it takes me to go to sleep. The number is usually around zero seconds.

And once I fall asleep, the next sound I usually hear is my alarm clock in the morning.

Not last night.

Sometime in the middle of the night, I woke up.

Wide awake.

I have no idea why.

So I tried to go back to sleep.

No luck.

Getting out of bed wasn’t an option.

So I laid there, and started to ponder.

Being the beginning of a new year, my wife and I have had several discussions around what lies ahead…

While we don’t intend on retiring anytime soon, our window of opportunity for new experiences is no longer unlimited.

We have been dealing with my parents who are both now in their late 80’s, and are dealing with the harsh realities of growing old.

There doesn’t appear to be a lot of room for dreams and aspirations.

Perhaps this is what was on my mind that caused me to wake up.

Let me fill you in dear reader, on the thoughts swirling around in my head in the dark room.

I started with the age old question of “Why are we here?”, or better yet, “Why am I put on this earth?”

You and I may differ on this, but I have an innate belief that there is a higher purpose than just consuming oxygen and then dying.

For the record, I would identify as a Christian, and believe in having a personal relationship with the Creator. That is the perspective I come from, and this musing isn’t intended to convert you to my position. Even if you do not believe in a personal God, you may find something of interest in the words that follow.

I cannot help but feel that life is a gift, and that I should not misuse this gift.

I don’t want to hit my parent’s age full of regrets for what did not happen.

So in my mind’s eye, my purpose is to experience the world, and leave it a better place than I found it.

I thought about the story of the starfish…

Once upon a time, there was an old man who used to go to the ocean to do his writing. He had a habit of walking on the beach every morning before he began his work. Early one morning, he was walking along the shore after a big storm had passed and found the vast beach littered with starfish as far as the eye could see, stretching in both directions.

Off in the distance, the old man noticed a small boy approaching. As the boy walked, he paused every so often and as he grew closer, the man could see that he was occasionally bending down to pick up an object and throw it into the sea. The boy came closer still and the man called out, “Good morning! May I ask what it is that you are doing?”

The young boy paused, looked up, and replied “Throwing starfish into the ocean. The tide has washed them up onto the beach and they can’t return to the sea by themselves,” the youth replied. “When the sun gets high, they will die, unless I throw them back into the water.”

The old man replied, “But there must be tens of thousands of starfish on this beach. I’m afraid you won’t really be able to make much of a difference.”

The boy bent down, picked up yet another starfish and threw it as far as he could into the ocean. Then he turned, smiled and said, “It made a difference to that one!”

Adapted from The Star Thrower, by Loren Eiseley (1907 - 1977)

I can’t ‘save’ the world, but I can make a difference in the lives of the people I connect with.

While simplistic, it is achievable.

So now I have my purpose.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t enough to help me go back to sleep.

What good is purpose then?

Why am I not satisfied with the results?

Then it occurred to me… Purpose needs passion… like a car needs gas. Passion fuels the results and gives purpose momentum.

This revelation was not helping me get to sleep, so I continued my pondering.

Can you have passion without purpose?

Of course you can, but I immediately thought of several examples of unbridled passion going amok.

The two are interconnected.

Purpose without passion produces no results.

Passion without purpose may not achieve meaningful results.

Together, purpose and passion can produce the results that I desire – to reach the end of my life without regrets and leave a legacy of making a difference.

With that, my mind signaled that it was satisfied, and I could resume my night’s sleep.

Which I did with pleasure. All that pondering was hard work.

I tried explaining my revelation to my wife this morning over coffee.

Somehow it didn’t come out as clear as it was at 3 am.

So I wrote this post to try and capture the brilliant insight I thought I had in the middle of the night.

I don’t think this was a result of eating pizza for a late dinner, but perhaps my mind carefully sorting and organizing my thoughts in a way I could understand the answer to my questions:

Why am I here?

How do I make a difference?

We hear a lot these days about passion (especially when you are talking with Javier 🐝 beBee here on beBee).

What do you think?

Can you separate the two (purpose and passion) and be happy with the result?

Images used under Creative Commons License.

About the Author:

I'm convinced that IT leadership needs to dramatically change how IT is delivered rather than being relegated to a costly overhead department.

In addition to transforming IT in my role as CIO, I look for every opportunity to talk about this... writing, speaking and now blogging on BeBee (www.bebee.com/@kevin-pashuk) , LinkedIn, ITWorld Canada, or at TurningTechInvisible.com.

I also shoot things... with my camera. Check out my photostream at www.flickr.com/photos/kwpashuk