| This post is my entry for the August 2026 IndieWeb Carnival, hosted by Chris at Uncountable Thoughts. This month’s topic: purpose. |
Honestly, this one made me think more than most of what I write. I’ve researched other posts before, and written about hard topics before, so it’s not really that. Something about this topic in particular just had me sitting with it longer, turning it over more than I usually do.
Merriam-Webster defines purpose as:
"the reason something is done or used: intention."
That's only one piece of it, though. The same entry also lists purpose as resolution, which is really just being determined to stick with something. That's not about a reason at all. It's about how determined you are. It can mean the aim or goal itself, the specific thing you're moving toward. And there's a fourth sense that doesn't need anyone choosing anything at all: to serve a purpose just means to have a use, whether anyone meant it that way or not. A knife serves a purpose. So does a heartbeat. Neither one is choosing anything.
So the same word covers a reason, a resolve, a goal, and a plain function. Four different things, one word. No wonder it's hard to pin down. On top of that there's a bigger split too. There's the big one: why are we here, why does anything exist. That's the version people mean when they ask if life has a purpose. Then there's the small one: why do you do the thing you do, why did you choose this over that. This post is mostly about the small kind. I'll leave the big one to people better equipped for it than me.
Sitting down to write this, something hit me. I've never once asked myself what my purpose is. Not for living, not for anything. I just live, and breathe, and keep going.
That's a bigger question than I expected to run into while writing a blog post. Do we have a purpose in anything? You expect a simple answer and instead you get more questions.
Is breathing a purpose? I don't think so. Breathing keeps me alive, but I never chose it and I never think about it. That's just a function, like a heart beating. It's not a choice and it's not a reason, it's just what a body does. At first, purpose felt like it had to involve choosing something, not just running on autopilot.
So then I thought about blogging. Do I have a purpose for writing here? Honestly, no. I just enjoy writing. I want to share my thoughts and maybe some people come read them. That's it. That's the whole reason.
Even that Merriam-Webster definition doesn't quite fit what I do here. Intention is right there in it, and I don't write with the kind of intention that word usually points to, the strategic kind, the one aimed at some outcome down the line. Enjoying it and wanting to share it are intentions too, technically. They're just the kind where doing it is the whole point. Nothing beyond that. That might be the most wonderful thing about blogging. Nobody hands you a rulebook. There's no requirement to have a purpose or a strategic intention behind any of it. You can just show up and write because you want to.
I don't know how many bloggers actually sit down and define a purpose for their blog. Most probably have a reason why they write, whether they've named it or not. But a reason sitting quietly in the background isn't quite a purpose yet. Building an audience. Documenting a big life change. Processing something hard. Teaching a skill or making a case for something they care about. Those become a purpose once someone notices they're doing it, and keeps doing it on purpose. Mine never got named until I sat down to write this post. And even now, it's less a purpose than a reason. Blogging is the what, not the why. Some things don't need a reason behind them at all. They're worth doing just because they're worth doing. That's closer to what blogging is for me.
Chris asks some big questions in the carnival prompt. Is purpose fixed, or does it change? Do we even need one? Would anything be different if we didn't?
My answer, after 22 years of blogging: purpose doesn't come first. It comes later, if it comes at all. And that's fine.
When I started this blog in 2004, there was no purpose. No plan. No niche. No strategy. Just a spot on the web that was mine. Blogging advice always says the opposite. Pick a niche. Know your audience. Define your why. I never did any of that, and the blog is still here.
Does anyone actually need a purpose? I don't think so. But if someone wants a reason to keep going, purpose is a good thing to go looking for. It's optional, not required. It's just useful.
While writing this, I looked at what other people say about purpose too. A few of them made me think harder about my own answer.
Viktor Frankl is the big one. He was a psychologist imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps, and afterward he built a whole theory out of what he saw there. His observation, not a settled fact, just his own read on it: prisoners who kept some kind of purpose, even a small one like giving a talk or making music, seemed, in his eyes, to handle it differently than the ones who didn't. Who survived came down to horror completely out of anyone's control, not their mindset. That's not what I'm saying here. But Frankl still thought purpose did something, even there. His line, borrowed from Nietzsche, was basically: if you have a reason to live, you can bear almost any way of living.
Turns out I'm not the only one making this case. Researchers have tracked adults over time and found something similar: people who felt a stronger sense of purpose were less likely to die in that stretch, whatever their age. That doesn't prove purpose is the reason why. There could be a dozen things tangled up together. But it's a real pattern, and it shows up outside of just one guy's theory from a concentration camp. Purpose isn't just a nice idea. It seems to actually do something for you.
Then there's Aristotle, who'd probably say I'm overthinking this. He believed everything has a built-in end it's aiming toward. An acorn aims to become an oak. A knife aims to cut. Human purpose, to him, is about living well, using good character and reason to get there. In his view, purpose isn't something you invent. It's already in you, waiting to be lived out.
Then Sartre knocks the built-in part over, though not quite the way I first had it. His argument: there's no purpose already sitting inside you, waiting. We're free, full stop, and that freedom means purpose only exists once you choose it and act on it. What he called bad faith isn't inventing a purpose to cope with that freedom. It's the opposite: pretending you're not free, pretending your purpose was fixed for you by something outside your control. Making your own meaning isn't Sartre hiding from freedom. It's exactly what he thought freedom was for.
Rilke says something similar, but softer, coming at it from a totally different angle. Writing to a young poet anxious for answers before he was ready for them, Rilke told him to live the questions now, and trust that someday, without even noticing it happening, he'd find he'd lived his way into the answer. That's not quite what Frankl said, building it because you have to. And it's not quite what Sartre said either, building it because you choose to. This one's patience instead of action.
I don't think any of them are wrong, though. Purpose isn't just one thing. Breathing is a function. There's no choosing involved. Blogging is something I built, post by post, without planning it. And some things really do just take time and staying patient with not knowing, the way Rilke describes. Different situations call for a different kind of purpose. It doesn't have to be the same thing every time.
That's the choice part of it, too. Sometimes purpose is something you deliberately go looking for. Sometimes you build one without noticing, and only recognize it afterward. And some people choose not to bother with one at all. That's a real choice, not a sign they missed something they were supposed to have all along.
Here's where I land. Sartre and Frankl may not be as far apart as they first appear. Frankl's prisoners weren't handed a purpose. Whatever ones they had, they built themselves, out of whatever freedom was left, in conditions built to take freedom away. That's not a purpose being uncovered. That's a purpose being made, on the spot, from whatever they had left, which is close to what Sartre says purpose always is.
That's exactly what happened with my blog. I didn't uncover a purpose in 2004. I built one, slowly, post by post, without noticing I was doing it. Twenty-two years later, I can look back and see what it became. That doesn't mean it was there all along. It means I made something, and the making came first.
So does purpose need to come before you start? I don't think so. Breathing kept me alive long enough to find out. But it might help to have a purpose you're willing to make up as you go. Frankl thought so too, even under circumstances I can't imagine. It's definitely enough to keep someone blogging for two decades.
Even this post proves it. I didn't sit down already knowing what I thought about purpose. I sat down because Chris hosts a monthly carnival and this month's topic caught my eye. I followed one thought after another, breathing, a dictionary definition, a psychologist who survived concentration camps, a philosopher who's been dead for two thousand years. None of that was planned. But somewhere in the middle of writing it, thinking out loud like this, I found more of an answer than I expected to. Maybe that's the whole trick. You don't figure out purpose by staring at the question. You figure it out by doing the thing, even when the thing is just rambling through a blog post until it starts making sense.