What Is My Purpose In Life?

Do you ever wonder why things happen the way they do? Do you ever wonder why you're here, what your purpose is in life? Do you ever wonder if you're meant to be here? Over the last few months, I've been giving these questions quite a bit of thought.

Late August, my family doctor retired, which meant my mom and I had to find a new one. We did, and we picked up our medical charts to take to this new doctor. Between our last appointment with our former doctor, and our first appointment with our new doctor, we had some time to look through our medical charts. In doing so, we found out something neither one of us knew about me. I was still born.

I'd always known that my first few days of life had been touch-and-go. My mom had an appointment for a non-stress test, and the doctors discovered I was in distress. So, as a result, I was born a month premature. I've also known that I had stopped breathing a couple of days into life, and I spent 15 days in NICU, as well as that my development was slowed in part due to being premature. (I'm also aware that I didn't speak in full sentences until I was 4; I'm making up for lost time, lol.) However, I did not know that I actually hadn't been alive when I was born. When I was born, I was clinically dead.

This knowledge sparked a few questions, the most prominent one being, "Why did I survive?" Why did I come back to life? Am I meant to be here? Why? What is it that I am supposed to accomplish in however many years I'm granted? Whose lives am I supposed to enrich, if any?

I have many acquaintances and people I see fairly regularly, but I have very few close friends. It's been that way since I was a child, primarily because I choose who I want to hang out with. The people I make time to meet with are, in many ways, very special to me. In spite of this, there have been people who have come into my life I feel like I was fated to meet for various reasons. A couple of them got me back into playing my guitar fairly regularly, another few have, and continue to be, my inspiration for my trilogy and other novels, and one other reminded me how much I used to love playing board games. There are people with whom I feel the most at home, and the most free to be me. They are the people who have enriched my life. If they have enriched my life in their own big and little ways, have I done the same for them? What is my purpose in their lives? Am I fulfilling that purpose?

Those who really know me, know that I can sometimes be completely off the wall. I am really not so different from say, Peter Pan, in that I am a kid at heart and always have been. My difficult birth has provided me with a humourous response of, "I didn't get enough oxygen as a baby" when people look at me as though I've got two extra heads. On occasion, that response becomes, "Ain't you glad I survived?" when those same people can only smile and shake their heads at me. In spite of this, it's something I have struggled to grapple with since August, and I suspect that I will continue to struggle with it forever.

Why did I survive on my birthday when thousands of other babies in the same predicament may not have? What makes me so special? Why me?

In thinking about it, I've come to realize that everyone has a purpose, something they are meant to do. Everyone is meant to touch someone, everyone is meant to influence someone else. Everyone has a path to travel, even if that path is not clear, and those paths intersect for a reason – some bad, some good.

With this in mind, everyone who has crossed my path has meant to. To those who have made me feel at home, I am forever grateful. To everyone to has crossed paths with me, thank you, for you have made my life what it is.

"One never reaches home, but wherever friendly paths intersect the whole world looks like home for a time." ~ Hermann Hesse