As someone who's had the "normal" procedure of a human life denied to him, I very frequently seek a purpose for myself and my life. By normal, I mean the life of a normal person. Spouse, job, kids, age, grandkids, death. As a bipolar person who can't work a full time job and hasn't made a penny as a writer, I have to almost constantly assess and reassess my purpose in life as to not fall into a great depression. As I began failing physically in the 1990s for the first time, I had no coping mechanisms or education or awareness of what I was or what I was to be. I was very much a materialist and felt like my life would be dictated by such materialism. As my health failed, those ambitions and aspirations faded and disappeared and I was left adrift mentally, emotionally and spiritually. I had a hard reality forced on me and became totally lost for what I felt like my destiny/fate would be. By destiny/fate, I mean that instinctive sense of why we're here on Earth, each as individuals. I'm not referring to nihilists, which so many people are (nihilism being people who believe we're here to live and die and that's it with no purpose.) I'm talking the idea that we're all here for a reason. My reason for being here is not to have kids and spread my genes as that would be a disaster, right not both for me and the world. I've thought perhaps my purpose is to be an entertainer as I am a naturally gifted writer and storyteller but the works I have online are largely ignored. It's also the wrong era for me as I find that white male writers are increasingly ignored and minority writers and women are pushed forward. That said, I'm also in a minority group as a bipolar person but the book I've written based on my experiences with mental illness has also met with no reaction. I've only finished a third of the story and maybe I'm meant to finish it all. Time will tell. As is, I have no desire to finish a story I already know just to have it completely ignored by everyone else.
So my purpose for being on this Earth isn't physical and, thus far, doesn't appear to be creative so what is it? I've been on meds for bipolar disorder and have been for years. It doesn't seem like there's any purpose in my symptoms for study as I just pretty much take my meds and talk to my doctor once every three months for more meds. Perhaps my purpose is over my cancer treatments. Maybe the experimental injections I'm getting will pave the way for new treatments. Maybe it's important that I be the one to get the shots.
Any which way I look at it, I can't help but conclude my purpose hasn't materialized yet. At age 50, with two cancer surgeries behind me, riddled with clinical OCD and Bipolar I and seemingly no future in the classic sense, I have no idea what that could be. If I'm being a nihilist, I would conclude my life is meaningless and I'm only here because I'm not not here but I consider that thought process defeatist. There's a reason for me to be here and it can't have arrived yet. It may be for something very important though I definitely don't see that for me, personally. Though a very interesting person, I'm very much a grain of sand on the beach, possibly more valuable as a guinea pig than anything else. If so, the doctors who create the treatments are the stars and the ones who are truly valuable and it takes nothing special to get jabbed twice a week with needles to make sure my cancer doesn't spread. So we'll see. I feel I'll know it when it happens. I hope I will.
