Purpose and surrender
The essence of purpose is to DO something, for example saving the earth by putting on a huge rock concert to which thousands of people will drive from faraway, which will burn through millions of kilowatt-hours and which will live forever, or at least it will on youtube. But there can be negative purpose. I remember saying something to Bono (yes really) on night in Notting Hill, about how U2 had shown how surrender could be seen as a positive act. That might also be phrased as an act of negative purpose. We have become so fixated on competitiveness and goals (in the American psychology sense) that we cannot comprehend their opposites. We cannot just be. Worse, we cannot let anyone or anytthing else be.
Even if there is some cosmic purpose or some sense in which human progress has to be kept on track through willpower (and I think there is), we have multiplied everything present so many times that there has to be room for the opposite of presence, absence. There is no need to write the next great novel or direct the next (insert director of choice) film (let’s face it you couldn’t do any worse). Someone else will do it, you will think you could have done it and you are probably right but you don’t actually need to. The only time I really felt needed in a job was as a taxi driver in Barnsley (who else wanted to do that?). Even when I thought I was being the great humanitarian, driving to Romania, someone else was doing it a lot better. So there is do and do not, and do not is often better. Imagine how much better life would be if certain politicians had done not, or whoever invented pop-up ads.
On the other hand, now is the time for action (Secret Affair, c 1980). How to decide? You’ll have to buy the book…
Tags: Bono, Purpose, Romania, Secret Affair, surrender