What if "What's my purpose?" is the wrong question?

Of robots and tea monks, star seekers and lost writers

Cover art for A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Beck Chambers. Art by Feifei Ruan.

I’m a little bit off kilter this week.

It’s been extra busy and I’ve been slightly under the weather. I have lots of ideas, but lack the focus or energy to articulate them. The words just aren’t coming.

In fact, the minute I pick up a pen or sit down at the keyboard, my mind doesn’t so much wander off as sprint away at top speed.

This, of course, makes me worry that I will never write again, that maybe I shouldn’t have been writing in the first place because if you are a writer, you write. That’s what you do. And if I’m not writing, am I no longer a writer? And if I’m no longer a writer, what is my purpose? Who am I?

I know I’m being overly dramatic, but it’s not entirely my fault. The idea of having a purpose has always been a bit of a tender spot for me.

☕️

The first time I saw the 1997 movie “Contact,” I was immediately envious of the protagonist, Dr. Eleanor "Ellie" Arroway.

Played by Jodie Foster, Ellie is a brilliant and headstrong scientist on a mission to make first contact with extraterrestrials who have dropped us a line from the Vega star system. Dr. Ellie didn’t have the answers, but she knew who she was and what she was meant to do. She had a clear purpose, and the means to pursue it.

Though I never watched the movie again, Foster’s portrayal of Ellie’s passion and conviction has always stuck with me. Even though her single-mindedness certainly caused problems in other areas of her life, there was a beautiful simplicity to building a life around one, clearly defined objective.

What must it feel like to know, for certain, what you’re supposed to do with your one wild and precious life.

That line comes, of course, from Mary Oliver’s beloved poem, “The Summer Day,” which closes with the question, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

The thing is, very few of us arrive on the planet with a clear idea of who we are or what we’re supposed to do. Unless you’re a preternaturally gifted athlete, artist, or some other kind of wunderkind, most of us just muddle along doing the best we can and hoping we accidentally bump into the thing that lights us up.

But maybe, “What’s my purpose?” is the wrong question.

☕️

I recently reread (for the third time) Becky Chambers’ novella, A Psalm for the Wild-Built. It’s the first of two “Monk & Robot” books that have been called gentle and hopeful science fiction.

In A Psalm for the Wild-Built a monk named Dex makes a dramatic change in their life as they grapple with a growing sense of emptiness. They leave the City and become a tea monk who travels from village to village by way of a pedal-powered “ox-bike” that hauls a mobile tea shop from which they dispense steaming cups of comfort to anyone who just needs a break (and maybe a shoulder to cry on).

But even this sweeping life change and noble new role is not enough to make Dex feel certain of who they are or what they’re meant to do. They still feel aimless and unsure.

Dex winds up meeting a robot named Mosscap, Splendid Speckled Mosscap, to be more precise. And Mosscap is always precise. There’s a long backstory about what happened with the robots and civilization in general, but that’s not really the point of the story.

Different people take different things away from Chambers’ novella, but the bit that jumps out at me has to do with purpose.

Mosscap joins Dex on an ill-advised hike to an abandoned monastery, and when things turn dangerous, tries to get Dex to turn back. When Dex refuses, Mosscap is confused and asks what happened to the monk to make them so adamant about risking life and limb to reach what appears to be an unimportant destination.

This is what Dex answers:

“I have it so good. So absurdly, improbably good. I didn't do anything to deserve it, but I have it. I'm healthy. I've never gone hungry. And yes, to answer your question, I'm - I'm loved. I lived in a beautiful place, did meaningful work. The world we made out there, Mosscap, it's - it's nothing like what your originals left. It's a good world, a beautiful world. It's not perfect, but we've fixed it so much. We made a good place, struck a good balance. And yet every fucking day in the City, I woke up hollow, and ... and just ... tired, y'know? So, I did something else instead. I packed up everything, and I learned a brand-new thing from scratch, and gods, I worked hard for it. I worked really hard. I thought, if I can just do that, if I can do it well, I'll feel okay. And guess what? I do do it well. I'm good at what I do. I make people happy. I make people feel better. And yet I still wake up tired, like ... like something's missing. I tried talking to friends, and family, and nobody got it, so I stopped bringing it up, and then I stopped talking to them altogether, because I couldn't explain, and I was tired of pretending like everything was fine. I went to doctors, to make sure I wasn't sick and that my head was okay. I read books and monastic texts and everything I could find. I threw myself into my work, I went to all the places that used to inspire me, I listened to music and looked at art, I exercised and had sex and got plenty of sleep and ate my vegetables, and still. Still. Something is missing. Something is off. So, how fucking spoiled am I, then? How fucking broken? What is wrong with me that I can have everything I could ever want and have ever asked for and still wake up in the morning feeling like every day is a slog?”

Yeah. I know.

As the two friends continue to talk, Mosscap says this,

“You’re an animal, Sibling Dex. You are not separate or other. You’re an animal. And animals have no purpose. Nothing has a purpose. The world simply is. If you want to do things that are meaningful to others, fine! Good! So do I! But if I wanted to crawl into a cave and watch stalagmites with Frostfrog for the remainder of my days, that would also be both fine and good. You keep asking why your work is not enough, and I don’t know how to answer that, because it is enough to exist in the world and marvel at it. You don’t need to justify that, or earn it. You are allowed to just live.”

It is enough to exist and marvel. You don’t need to justify that, or earn it. You are allowed to just live.

☕️

I don’t have a nice, neat way to wrap this up or make it make sense.

(Did I mention that words are not my friends this week?)

I’m not even entirely sure I have a point other than to remind you (and me) that it’s okay if you’re not productive all the time or aren’t sure what your purpose is or if you even want one.

Sometimes meaning is overrated.

“Then how,” Dex said, “how does the idea of maybe being meaningless sit well with you?”

Mosscap considered. “Because I know that no matter what, I’m wonderful,”

Yes you are.💜