What If There Is No Purpose to Life?
This May, Beauty Hunter Explores five What Ifs. Let's break ourselves open to new ways to be.
Dear Beautiful Friends,
Welcome to Day 1 of Five What-Ifs to Change Your Life, brought to you by Beauty Hunter Explores How to Do More of What You Love (Even When the World Seems a Hellscape). May 20 - June 10, Tuesdays, 12 - 1 pm PDT on Zoom.
Take these questions as prompts to accompany you through your days; play and experiment with them; write about purposelessness, see what else could be possible, even freeing for you. Here we go, ready?
What if there is no purpose to living?
I don’t mean this in a f*ck-life, nihilism kind of way, or as a response to gloom-and-doom-ism.
But what if you freed yourself from having a purpose?
Consider a no-purpose life as a beautiful alternative to those melancholic, existential wanderings that float into the mental weather system at 2 a.m., pouring down questions like “What am I doing with my life?” and “What’s my purpose, have I messed it all up?” or “What now?!” UGH, right?
WHAT IF there is no purpose to life, other than being IN IT, as best you can?
Pretend we live in a world where “What’s my purpose?” made as much sense as: “What’s my ranunculus for flip-turning?”
What if freeing yourself of “purpose” is a way to step into the impersonal nature of life?
The problem with purpose, is how we seek it as a way to batten down the hatches of uncertainty, as a way to prove our thesis of existence. It feels so real, so necessary (I’m raising my hand here), but it ISN’T.
If you need a role model, look at a tree or plant or pet, and imagine you are that. Imagine you are the gorgeous color of cornflower blue on your favorite coffee cup. Blue just is, no reason for its magnificence. Be blue—blue-tiful.
What if you are that mountain, that tree or flower—reveling in the sun, the stars; responding to the great winds and turning seasons. Go with it, for shits and giggles if nothing else. Play make-believe. F*ck purpose, for one beautiful week.
One lazy afternoon where I was pinned to the couch with existential dread, I rallied, and rode my beloved e-bike to the gym (total of 2.8 miles). On the way there, I ran into Nina, out in her garden, full of bright happy colors and a batch of bright ranunculas. She set a bouquet aside, which I picked up on my way home. As I rode away, I felt moved almost to tears, which surpsed me. Why? This minuscule act of riding my sorry ass to the gym and connection with a friend I see once or twice a year was so simple, beautiful, and rewarding (as in, the universe throwing me a hostess gift for getting out into the world).
I wondered: “What if this is life’s purpose—getting out into it, making these connections, with humans, nature, beauty, movement?” And then—I laughed at how this system is constantly seeking meaning and purpose, even when I think I’m not.
ALSO—later this month we’re knocking off a new course, which I’m calling a playshop. Part salon, part classroom, and a lot of IRL experimenting and play, we’re going to enter our own lab of What Ifs, and integrate more of what we love into daily life.
Four weeks, 10 people max, I can’t wait to explore with you. Read on:
Beauty Hunter Explores 🦉 How to Do More of What You Love
What if doing More of What You Love was an act of:
So trippy, your blog about what’s the point of life coincided with a book I am reading called “Why Fish Don’t Exist” and the part I had read just before your post has the author asking her dad this very question, to which he gleefully replied “Nothing!”
She said “you don’t matter seems to fuel his every step, his every bite. So live as you please…what could be a grim reality has pumped his life full of vigor. Has made him live big and good. I have arrived my whole life to follow in his nihilistic, clown- shoed footsteps. To stare our pointlessness in the face, and waddle along toward happiness because of it.”
I love this idea of tackling the day or the week or the month without the societal pressure of having a purpose. Just being. Just putting good energy out there. Yes!
Thank you.