Your Primary Life Task

Most peo­ple define their lives by the jobs they have done or the num­ber of chil­dren they have had. They will tell about where they have lived and the things that have hap­pened to them. If you ask some­one if he or she has ful­filled the pri­mary objec­tive of their respec­tive lives, you will get a puz­zled look and an answer like, “I hope so.”
It is not a com­mon ques­tion. Usu­ally, it is reserved for end-of-life con­ver­sa­tions or as a ques­tion posed for the future in grad­u­a­tion speeches. Many peo­ple go through life never ask­ing the ques­tion. They just check things off the list of social expec­ta­tions. At their funer­als peo­ple will look at their list, call it a eulogy, and then toss in the last shovel of dirt…burying the ques­tion itself.
We Amer­i­cans are prag­mat­ics. We are born; we go to school; we work; we die. Ques­tions of mean­ing seem to fit mostly in French cafes or sem­i­nary class­rooms. Amer­i­cans “do their duty” and go on. If there is one press­ing and pri­mary task, it will prob­a­bly hap­pen auto­mat­i­cally — at least that is the con­sen­sus.
I like pos­ing ques­tions of pur­pose and mean­ing (and I started doing this long before I became a min­is­ter). What if our pri­mary pur­pose in liv­ing is to expe­ri­ence beauty? What if we are here just to expe­ri­ence mys­tery? “What if” opens the door to many pos­si­bil­i­ties. Some peo­ple are eas­ily intim­i­dated by the open doors that lie behind the ques­tions. Oth­ers are intrigued, but do not have the courage to step past the thresh­olds.
I have learned that all I have to do is raise haunt­ing ques­tions. For those that hear them, their souls will do the rest.