“the cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.”
“What have you done?”
There was once a cheerful old man who would ask the same question of just about everyone he fell into conversation with: What have you done that you believe in and you are proud of?
He never asked the expected questions such as “What do you do for a living?” or “How are you?” It was always What have you done that you believe in and are proud of?”
It was an unsettling question for people who had wrapped up their identity in what they do, the things they have, and how they are perceived by others.
Not that the old man was aggressive in his questioning, he had a congenial nature and always asked the question with a smile and a wink. He was delighted by a woman who answered, “I’m doing a good job raising my three children,” and a cabinetmaker who said, “I believe in good workmanship and practice it;” and by a woman who said, “I started a bookstore and it is the best bookstore for miles around.”
The old man explained to an acquaintance, “I don’t really care how they answer, I just want to put the thought into their minds. They should live their lives in such a way that they can have a good answer. Not a good answer for me, but for themselves. That’s what important.”
We spend a great deal of time trying to find our purpose in life. Some people live their whole lives and never find it. But the answer is right in front of us, God has given us a purpose and written it in our hearts. He has equipped us with a unique set of gifts, talents and abilities that will allow us to fulfill that purpose. The problem is that we have buried it under our wants, desires, and selfishness.
God knows and cares about each one of us, even all the hairs on our head are counted. He wants us to discover the purpose that he has put each one of us here to fulfill. He cannot simply tell us or we would place no value on it, we have to find it ourselves. But to find that purpose we have to look in the last place we want to go, deep in our hearts.
The Cave
Joseph Campbell once said, “the cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.”
Our hearts hold our purpose, deep down we all know this, it is our own fear that prevents us from looking for it.
What is it we are afraid of? Rejection? Ridicule? Tyranny?
If we have discovered our purpose, our apostolate, we need not ever fear, for the guiding hand of the Father is always with us and protects us. He who shows His concern over the most insignificant of animals will care all the more for His children. We are safe to the extent that we carry out our Christian mission, to bring the world back to God.
There is often a disconnect between what we are called to do and the need to contribute to the maintenance and well being of our families and households. And while we should be mindful of these two halves of our ourselves, we need never let one dominate the other. Many artists do several types of art, there is the art they feel they are called to do, they often describe this as the art they do for themselves. Then there is the art they do that sells, that put food on the table and a roof over their heads.
John Singer Sargent was considered the finest portrait painter of his time. He is known for the roughly 900 oil paintings he created in his career. But he also loved watercolors and painted over 2000 of them. He was fascinated by the qualities of light and the different ways he could reproduce the magic he saw before him. The watercolor paintings were close to his heart. “They keep up my morale,” he told a friend, “and I never sell them.” He did however frequently give them away as gifts. There was a joke in his circle of friends that young couples would get engaged just so they could get a Sargent watercolor.
Eventually Sargent came to see this body of work as serious art in its own right, and not simply a diversion from his commercial portraiture. But in his studio he kept one small painting of flowers, propped up against the wall. He never sold this painting despite many offers. He finally confided to a friend that he considered it his best work, it was what he was most proud of. When he began to doubt his own talent and ability, he would look at that painting and be reminded of what he was capable of doing.
So instead of asking ourselves “why am I here?” or “what’s my purpose in life?” perhaps we should ask a different question. “What have you done, or what can you do, that you believe in and are proud of?”
What have you done that gives you a sense of accomplishment? When ecerything else fades away what is the thing you can point to with pride and say “I did that?”
When we are called to account for how we have used our gifts and talents, what will we offer to God that we believed in? What did we do that made a difference in the life of someone else? How did we change our little corner of the world for the better?
Pax vobiscum