Discovering Life’s Purpose

Our family purpose has been caught between words and put down to paper.

I’m happy, because it fits our current stage of life like a glove. I’m surprised because it’s not close to any family purpose statement I have ever read. And I have read a few that felt like, with small tweaks, could easily work for my family. I was even jealous a little, since some of them were radiating such passion and dedication… I wanted ours to be like that. But borrowing someone else’s purpose statement would be as bad as creating one out of thin air. I knew that if it was going to work, our purpose as a family had to be found and identified.

We found our purpose and now I know that the others I so admired are nowhere near our own.

Our Family’s Purpose Statement

This is our version one. I predict with time it will change evolve into something even more timeless and treasured. I hope that any children we may have will come to embrace what we find important and that with time, they will leave their own fingerprint on it.

We believe that our purpose as a family is to live a life of joy. We will accomplish this by:

The wording of the sub-points is somewhat unconventional. For your benefit I’ll elaborate a little:

Maintaining a down to earth crazy approach to living

We don’t care much about stereotypes or what’s expected of people our age. On one side we act in much more responsible way than many our own age. On the other, we don’t shy from letting our kindred spirit run wild. We’ve been spotted dancing down the street and regularly settle minor disagreements with tickle fights. Both approaches are very valuable to us and should be maintained.

Supporting each other and others we care about

We like to help each other and other people. We’re not a very sociable though. Honestly, we’re rather shy! But we want to support our friends, family and the community we live in. We also have skills which make it possible. So it’s all good.

Making our home functional and simple

We mostly use our home for the very basic – sleep, eat, bath etc. Also, time permitting, we pursue our hobbies. These revolve mostly around our computers and wardrobe full of Lego. We wish to keep our home decluttered and furnished to function. This way we gain time and space to pursue whatever brings us joy.

Living a sustainable life

Where possible we want to buy and do things that do not hurt the earth. Simple.
Well, not really. But we do make more and more conscious decisions when we buy stuff. Namely, we buy more second-hand, we recycle more. We use a home made shampoo. Slowly other parts of our life may flourish too.

Find your family’s focus

We used the guidelines from ‘Organized Simplicity’ to get to our statement. If you don’t have access to this book you can find all the necessary guidelines here.

The purpose of our lives is to be happy.
Dalai Lama

The whole process took us around an hour, but if you’re starting really fresh I would strongly recommend dedicating more time. There is no point of rushing the process and no benefits in taking short-cuts. To have any effect in your life the statement has to truly reflect who you are as a family deep inside and where you want to go from there.

Give it a try, there isn’t really anything to lose. And a whole new level of peace to gain.

What are your thoughts? Share your version ones if you will. And if your statement matured – let me know how it changed over time!

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