The Purpose-Focused Life

As the poet Jorie Graham said in a recent interview, “Speed allows you to bypass experience and that is probably the greatest desire of humans right now, that is, not to be touched by experience and just to be able to grasp, laugh, and to be entertained quickly.”

I always think of “inspiration” as an amateur word. Inspiration is being propelled to do something, or to think something, or to go somewhere, by some sort of external stimulus. And that to me is undependable.

But purpose—purpose is a white-hot fire inside of you, a self-delusion that keeps you coming back into the room to work decade after decade,... See more

we are starved for personal relationships but we are simultaneously discouraged from nurturing them, de-skilled in the relevant habits, and sold inadequate substitutes in their place.

Franklin's approach reveals what distinguishes philosopher-builders from ordinary builders: the intellectual courage to question prevailing assumptions, the moral clarity to build for human flourishing rather than mere optimization, and the pioneering vision to shape the future rather than merely respond to it.

A philosopher-builder starts with explicit moral commitments, constantly examined and refined. For example, they recognize that human autonomy—people's ability to deliberate about their goals and pursue them freely—is essential to what makes achievement meaningful.

manufactured neediness prepares the ground for new commodities. The goal is not to alleviate loneliness or isolation by fostering vernacular human relationships, which, of course, cannot be readily monetized, but to insinuate, pejoratively, that such relationships are inefficient and full of friction.

Every morning, those are the first words I type.

How do I want to live today?

I’ve come to refer to this as “the living question.”

And holy shit. It’s hard to over-emphasize how meaningful this small shift has been for me. As someone who habitually escapes into grandiose daydreaming about my future, or wallowing in the mistakes of the past, this pra... See more

Purpose creep is a process of psychological aggregation that takes projects that are modest in scope and inflates them into the type of impossible, burdensome task that makes us balk and then retreat.