Finding Purpose

We had a training for work a couple weekends back and spent a lot of time talking about purpose. With respect to my job, it's discovering your purpose as a health care provider (Why are you a Physical Therapist?) and helping patients realize their purpose (Why are you in Physical Therapy?). The questions sound basic, and some might argue, easy enough. But when you bluntly ask people basic questions like that it makes them stop and think. Sometimes they think (and say) - "What the hell do you mean why am I here? I just had shoulder surgery, you quack. Fix it!" but what I'm really trying to get at is what this injury/illness/condition has taken from them, and if they're ready to work to get it back. If they're not, or they can't give me a good reason for why they want to get better, or (even worse) they don't believe they can get better, guess what? They won't.  People come to me asking for answers. But what they really need are questions. We all do, to discover what we want in life, so we can got get it. The getting is easy. The discovering can be tricky.

Naturally, this got me thinking. Selfishly it got me thinking about myself, and my own goals. Specifically this Ironman. So I asked myself "Why are you doing this Ironman?" I immediately reverted to my defense mechanism of choice - sarcastic humor:

"It sounds like a good way to lose 5 lbs."
"Who needs a social life anyway?"
"I want people to oogle me through envy-goggles"
"Maybe I'll meet a famous person."
"Because I'm a sadistic pyschopath"
"Chafing really feels pretty good once you get past the 1st layer of skin."
"I'll finally be able to get one of those douchey car stickers. Or a tattoo!"

I'm thinking tramp stamp... yeah, tramp stamp for sure.

This actually went on for a while. But when it came down to it, I discovered something interesting, and that is this: At this point in time, I don't fully understand. So articulating it difficult. Basically, I just want to see if I can. Pushing myself to physical extremes has always been attractive to me. It's exhilarating, terrifying, painful, and exhausting. But facing those elements have always proven to give me a kind of clarity, and sense of accomplishment that I can't find anywhere else. This event is just the next logical step on my road to self-exploration and therefore discovery. And discovering myself seems like a pretty good goal.

In other news: It's 10pm and therefore officially past my bed time. I wish this were funnier. My last post was funnier. I wrote it 2 weeks ago, but it somehow got deleted in the posting process and I was so pissed I couldn't bring myself to write again until tonight. So it's short...and unfunny. Kind of like me :)