On Purpose

I can hear their words as clear as a bell -- My sister or brother telling on me. “He did it on purpose!” they would rant. There were many times I accused them in the same way, “She did it on purpose, Mom!” I would scream.

It’s a common phrase when we’re young. Likely someone got hit while roughhousing and thought the perpetrator did it intentionally. Or maybe the accuser was trying to get the other person in trouble in retaliation for some prior run-in.

Regardless, my parents, like all other parents, were now presented with a challenging predicament. Two (or more) of their children were presenting differing stories and they needed to judge as to which story was “the truth.” Back in my youth, I could not understand this challenge. Obviously my sister had indeed done “it” on purpose, and I was obviously telling the truth (ok, so maybe not ALL of the time).

When I became a parent, my turn came to be the judge; a situation I detested. How could these two people be forcing me to pick one of them over the other? Thank goodness my children are older now, and the situation no longer presents itself with any frequency.

Yes, we seem to grow out of using this accusation as we mature. Even if we say the phrase aloud now, we tend to use a childlike voice, harkening back to the immature and taunting ways of our youth. As adults we only use this phrase as a joke or sarcastic reference to a family member, friend, or peer’s behavior. That’s too bad, living a life “on purpose” is the greatest thing we can do with our short time here on earth.

Merriam-Webster’s defines purpose (in part) as “something set up as an end to be attained; a fine definition, but probably not the optimal way to describe a life. A life of purpose has many interwoven meanings. A singular larger purpose is almost certainly something we all struggle towards and strive to understand for our unique lives. It is the topic of countless books and a core focus of our faith.

As those young people that accused one another of little things that happened in our backyards and play rooms, we were just beginning to understand that each individual moment, and our actions and reactions to them, have impacts on the world we live in and the people in it. As we never stop growing and understanding, we continue our realization, that living each of life’s moments on purpose and in alignment with our current and evolving understanding of our life’s greater purpose, is what it’s all about. In short, our purposeful response to every moment of our lives, results in a life of purpose.

What a life you would have led if at a young age a loved one accused you by saying “he did it on purpose,” and then again at the time of your golden years, after a life well-lived, those same words were spoken once again.