Something is missing from your life. You feel the emptiness acutely, yet you can’t be bothered to do anything about it. You’re just too tired, too jaded, too consumed by apathy. Maybe I’m over dramatising a little, but what would it take to get your attention?

You’re desperate for a deeper connection, deeper meaning, but at the same time you remain numb. Do you know what I mean? Why do other people people seem to have it all figured out? Why are they so full of energy? It seems that they have a vision. And I don’t think it’s necessarily impossible to follow your vision, the difficult bit is creating that vision in the first place. You cannot have a vision without a purpose, just as sure as you cannot have purpose without passion! Here lies the rub. It is purpose we seek, ultimately, and passion that we need to uncover.

So perhaps the problem is not the problem. The problem is how we are trying to solve the problem. Maybe we need to stop looking and start doing. Passion and purpose are not in the habit of coming knocking at your door. I’m sorry to be the bearer of such tragic news. You are going to have to get off your tired ass and do something, you need to put yourself out there.

You can’t over-think it and worry about whether it will work out or not, whether you’re going to enjoy it or not. Just get up and get moving. Try out a few different things and see (feel) how you like them. This is the only way to find the things that float your boat. You can’t sit around and think about it, it is only through the actual experience of it that you can tell whether it evokes any emotion in you at all.

So get on that bicycle, write that short story, go take those dance lessons, plant that veggie garden. Change your hair, run the first kilometre, start that recipe blog, just do that thing, as stupid as it might look to you today. Start somewhere, anywhere will do. Explore. The key is to enjoy the process. If you don’t enjoy it, try something else. Start small, if you have to.

The truth is that while we’re alive, we do stuff anyway, some of these things are meaningful and some not so much. We need to do more of the stuff that actually means something to us, more of the things that actually blow our hair back. That’s all, it’s actually really simple.

You could get started by doing a little self-searching, ask yourself a few questions.

• What do you love?
• What are you willing to struggle for? What will you keep doing long after others have given up?
• What comes easily to you? Now, when you were younger or even as a child? Drawing, painting, writing?
• What do you get lost in? What makes time stand still for you? Where do you find your flow?
• What are you willing to suck at? At least for a while in the beginning? What is so worth it to you?
• Who are you going to help?
• How are you going to help? What cause or problem matters to you?
• How do you want to be remembered? What do you want to leave behind?

You can have many passions and still only one purpose. Perhaps the purpose of life is simply to live on purpose.