What am I Here For?

A woman struggled with her marriage and with what she thought her life should be like at age 40. After thinking about her predicament for sometime she decided to leave her husband and two children to move to a large city several hours away. She told her family, "I want to go to the city to find myself."

Her five-year-old daughter asked, "But what if you're not there?" It is a fair question. External changes -- job, house, city -- usually provide just that: external changes.

I was tucking our granddaughter, age eight, into bed one night after our prayers when she asked a question: "Grandpa, sometimes I wake up during the night and I ask myself, 'What am I on this earth for? What does God want me to do?'" The 40-year-old and the 8-year-old were asking essentially the same question: "How am I to live my life?" However, they were asking it in very different ways. The adult phrased her goal in terms of discovering herself; the child put her question in terms of discovering her purpose in life.

In my own life the goal of self-discovery has turned out to be a mountain I cannot scale directly. But the child's question caused me to rededicate my efforts to get more and more involved with others around the challenge, "What are we on this earth for? What does God want me to do?" One approach to my own Christian mission has been to conduct classes and seminars on Victor Frankl's logotherapy, a method to help people find healing and growth by assisting them in the search for meaning. This devout Jewish psychiatrist said that in the concentration camps he had to teach the despairing inmates that "It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us." This challenge overcame their despair by helping them find a reason to live.

I have learned that one way to help people get going is to assist them in discovering the right direction at their particular bend of the road, given the changes in their health, family, job, and spiritual lives. Factory managers, nursing home administrators and staff, educators, real estate agents, and others have participated in the seminar, "Rediscovering Meaning in the Workplace." They make an inventory of their abilities, values, and challenges, then redefine their mission statement. This keeps them from going into new territory with an old map.

The need for a paycheck shoves us out the door on Monday morning, but it does not pull us to work. It is our work mission that draws us. Others may do the same thing you do in terms of job description, but your mission transcends your paycheck and job description. No one else can bring the unique characteristics and gifts to the workplace and all of life that you can.

Frankl's emphasis on each person's uniqueness and on ultimate values serve as the first step for many to consider God's claims on their lives. Jesus spoke of losing, not finding, ourselves. And he also challenged his friends and others to take his individually designed yoke, that is, their unique mission. When my granddaughter asked me, "What does God want me to do?" I explained that no else one on earth was like her and so no one could give back to life what she could give back. That was what God wanted her to do. I have found no other challenge as motivating as this one.

Paul Welter has recareered after a long tenure at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. He still teaches "Learning from Children" there and leads seminars. Paul's radio show airs especially for farmers and truckers on several midwest stations. He also consults with businesses and organizations in the area of work-weariness.

Paul's books, Heading for Home & Learning from Children are available from FAW.