Purpose

“Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can’t help them, at least don’t hurt them.”- Dalai Lama

Lord of the Flies by William Golding shows even though a child’s world is miniature, when in a stressful situation; the nature will change in order to accommodate survival.

The young person will do whatever it takes to survive as if the words of Es’kia Mphahlele were carved in his head, and a voice screaming “Let men accuse, deride and ridicule you in your actions; let them complain that you don’t respect or fear them, let them say you don’t earn your living honestly; but they too, sooner or later, will come down to the hard, cold and indisputable fact that man must live”

When a person is forced to defend dear live they use whatever skills, talents they have to make it. That is like when an orange is squeezed to extract all the juices out?

A student can play around all year long and when it comes to the end of the journey pull out the big guns and come out with flying colors. Well I think that should sand out in some way, because it’s only when we are going through tough times that we can find what we are here to do. That’s when we can find our purpose in life.

The Random House Dictionary defines purpose as the reason for which something exists or is done, used, etc. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition says that purpose is the object toward which one strives or for which something exists, an aim or goal.

And the Urban Dictionary contemporarily puts it as: it’s that little flame that lights a fire under your ass, purpose. It keeps you going strong like a car with a full tank of gas (petrol).

Isn’t this beautiful, that your purpose isn’t something that you have to look outside of yourself to find? I find it great; I find it magnificent, because it kills the thought and idea that our calling is out there somewhere in the sky.

Whenever I think of purpose, I get a sense of the Creator’s factor in every single human being. Remember that you were created in the image of the Creator.

That when the Creator made the universe, he took a piece of Himself and put in you, yes brother, yes my sister, you have the Creator factor in you, you can create anything, you can build that dream and make it in this life time.
Decide, and work at it, after all, it is already in you!
Sibusiso Leope

Most of the time we think of failure wrongly; we perceive failure as punishment. But as Vusi Thembakwayo states, whenever you try something and fail at it, it is just the universe asking you if you are sure, all that you have to say is yes, and go at it again.

Diana Krall has a beautiful song called, Pick Yourself Up, with the lines “don’t you remember the famous men who had to fall to rise again, they picked themselves us, dust themselves off and started all over again”

When was the last time that you did that, when last did you pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again? Sibusiso Leope’s story is quite inspiring and touching, given that he failed matric, and failed his first year of tertiary. Nonetheless, he kept on going.

Growing up in the township, you are surrounded by people who drop out of school, who are druggies, who drink and even do crime. This becomes part of your environment and that is all that you know when you grow up in such a place; it becomes part of your orientation.

But what happens when you fail your high school, what happens when you are deemed at the loser, what happens when all the sudden the people who used to entertain and befriend you move on.

What do you do when you find out that your friends were only constituents and comrade? Do you give up? Yes you, especially when you were raised in a place where people give up. But what did he do? He kept on going; he repeated it and passed it.

It is important to keep on going when you think that you are at the bottom, when you think you have hit rock bottom, you have to pick yourself up and start all over again. Because life is not a sum of how many times we fall but of how many times we get up and keep on going.

Now what do you do when you are in an environment with rich students and upper middle class students? What do you do when everyone around is having fun, while you know that you are from the township? What do you do when your lack is painted all over your face, does that cloud your judgment, and does that cloud your goals? Yes it does, it really does, it puts you down. But if you have the drive, you get up; you make life what you want it to be. No matter what it takes!

That’s what success is made of; success is a product of your hard times, because you need to go through hard times before you succeed. If you do not go through those hard times, you did not conquer anything. You need to conquer pain and defeat if you want to be successful, even if you fail 100 times, you should never stop until you win. Like they say, the meal is never over until the fat man leaves. I say it’s not over until you win, if you do not win it’s not over.

So, look at Sibusiso Leope today and you will realize that his love for education and helping children get through school is because of the pain that he went through in his high school days. And the lessons that he learnt are being used to inspire a new generation of entrepreneurs and scholars.

Now that’s how you find your purpose in life. You find your purpose by the drive that you have to keep on going when all else fails, when you are on your back and you think that you are done with, you pick yourself up. There is a saying I use all the time when things don’t go well, it goes like “If you fall, make sure you land on your back, because if you can look up, you can get up”

So embrace your pain, embrace your talents and use that to live your purpose.
You must want something in life, you must have something in your life that you are willing to die for. You must want something that will push you, and you must want something that will make people think that you are crazy.

Look, if everybody says that you are good, you must know that something is wrong, somebody must think that you are wasting your time. Everybody must think that you are not doing enough to get through life, everybody must think that you are not good enough.

When this happens then you will know you are living your purpose, because so many people are out there not living their purpose. So, many people are out there not doing what they need to do, so they will have a problem with you if you live your purpose.

They will have a problem with you, they will have a problem with what you do and where you are in life. They will have a problem with how you look at life. But that does not mean you have to stop, that simply means you have to keep pushing, because for every level there is another devil.