Living With Purpose

What is your purpose? What gets you up in the morning? What do you think about? What centers your day? Something. You may not think so, but it matters, and not just to you.

What is that something? Worry, fear, fret over forgetting something – or curiosity, wonder, a mission, hungry heart, faith, ambition? Do you ponder lifting those who cross your mind – or get trapped in the news, others’ political views, and let the aches define you?

We do have a choice – let pit stops missed distract us, or focus on laps left to be run. We can worry about what might have been, or put our attention on what remains to be done.

Do you start with remorse, regret, some shapeless shadow that slows your motion, or are you the sort with things to build, letters to write, places to go, skills to hone, always resilience shown?

In a larger sense, our whole nation is in a mid-history crisis, uneasy with who we are, not sure we should be proud of what we have always been, unsure of why others miss what we see.

We worry about America’s kids getting these mixed, muddy, misguided messages – yet that, too, is cause for action. It can either drag us down or lift us up, create ambivalence or create resolve.

We all know – if few say it – that today’s indulgent, fictional culture, this artificial righteousness about unrighteous causes, narcotics made legal for fun, boys invading girls’ sports, locker rooms, and bathrooms, dumbing down math for “racial equity,” redefining biology, rewriting history, playing God, and promoting violence for peace – is dangerous.

Most realize that nations, like people, go through phases, get swept into false enthusiasms, radical fads, collective dissociation from reality, sudden certainty about what is objectively uncertain, preoccupied with what others are distorting, what intelligence calls circular reporting.

We know that fear can be paralyzing, shiny things mesmerizing. The key is perspective, shaking yourself out of that personal funk created by absorption in the latest national funk.

Historically, collective misconceptions – social and political – have risen, ruled a bit, retreated, been defeated. The tide comes in, deposits what it will, and the tide goes out. We just happen to live in a time with lots of flotsam, lots of garbage around us.

Linking our day to the nation’s plight, we teach purpose by having it. Republics depend on sound mental and emotional health, since that is the stuff on which the rest is built, on which the future will bloom or wilt.

While adults define today, kids define tomorrow; what they are taught defines the future – and here is the hope, too. If we rise with purpose each day – conviction to move forward – we teach that lesson. If we give up, we teach giving up; if we get up, we teach getting up.

Think about it. What regenerates national and personal growth, re-stokes the fire, alters the life of a person or nation, makes us suddenly revive, rediscover our stride, and strive? The answer is simple, attitude and acting on it – more simply, having a serious, good, animating purpose.

Recent studies show America’s kids are confused, disoriented, misled and dismayed, unclear what they should believe, disheartened, unsure of who they are, even lost. But they can be found.

We know dreams are worth their weight in time, that finding and working toward them changes a life. We know risk and failure are essential for learning, growth, and success, and yes – even allow some to find storms in which to dance. Sometimes, all we need is an example and chance.

We know that society’s current confusion around history, morality, sacrifice and service are troubling and real, that uncertainty does not forge nerves of steel. We know in dangerous times –in any time – no good comes from substituting political fervor and froth for truth.

So what is the answer? How can we, as individuals, help replenish the nation’s life force, correct the collective attitude, and restore direction, focus, dignity, and compass? How can we help to calm uneasy hearts, settle the unsettled kid, do for others what others once for us did?

How can we – and society as a whole – reset the dial, teach kids to respect themselves, get up and be strong, go the extra mile, respect the nation’s past, ideals and founding, finally to smile?

We have to recall how those lessons were taught to us in childhood, not disown them, not pretend it does not matter. We have to direct ourselves at America’s youth, and talk truth. We have to rise with purpose, teach it, just as purpose was taught to us.

This thing I am talking about amounts to not giving up on ourselves, on the next generation, or on the nation. The task is simple because we know how to do it, hard because it is always hard. The glass is both half full and half empty; challenges can both drain and sustain.

The choice is on us. We awake each day, brush our teeth, set our course, imagine ways to use the day – with purpose, wondering, thinking, and doing – or not. We decide, teach the way, or slide.

Living with purpose is a real thing. It lifts the individual, lifts the society filled with such individuals. Elevated, these societies lead – ours long has. What we forget is that every day we teach – ourselves and others – by what we do. Living with purpose…is the intergenerational glue. We can, at our best we do.

Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC.