What's My Purpose?
When Function and Purpose Collide
I’m sure we’ve all asked this at least once in our lives. It’s often one of the first questions we ask as we begin to spiritually wake up: What’s my life purpose?
But if you think about it, that’s actually a pretty surface-level question. What we’re often really asking is: What should I be doing every day? How do I contribute to the systems I live within? What kind of job should I get?
But here’s a better question:
Am I here to conform to the human-made structure… or am I here to break it?
And I don’t mean go rob a bank or be a jackass. I just mean you don’t necessarily have to get a traditional job or follow the traditional “rules” society lays out for us.
Let’s start by distinguishing between purpose and function—especially when it comes to the roles we take on in life.
If you have children, you become a parent. If you get married, you become a spouse. You’re somebody’s child. You might be a sibling. You might be an aunt, uncle, or grandparent. These are roles—relational identities we step into.
You may also need to get a job to eat and keep a roof over your head, because the system still demands that you fight just to survive. But most of those jobs? They’re functional.
Sure, they serve a purpose—survival. But survival isn’t a soul-level purpose. It’s not the root of the question when we ask, What is my life purpose?
To even begin to find that answer, we have to move beyond survival.
I set out to write as a career. And like many careers, writing can be functional or purposeful. Am I doing it because I want to—or because it pays well and I need to eat?
Because I didn’t conform to the system by becoming a journalist or a freelance writer, writing became more functional—a way to fulfill a deeper purpose. The purpose wasn’t about the role or the title of “writer.” It was going to come through what was being said. And that’s something I’ve been questioning a lot lately.
The system says our work should either solve a problem or fulfill a need. That’s how it defines purpose.
But are those really purposes—or are they functions?
When we start asking about our life purpose, we usually define it in terms of what it does:
What job can I do that solves a problem or fills a need?
I became a trained teacher because of that definition. I tried to fill a need.
Trying to build a life around something that was functional instead of purposeful caused pain—it wasn’t fulfilling.
But when I write, I’m not filling a need. I’m not solving a problem. It’s not even my means of survival at the moment.
So what am I doing?
It’s asking me to redefine how I understand purpose—not as something that serves the system, but as something that serves the soul. There’s a deeper calling I’ve had to start digging into.
If function is about filling needs, surviving, or solving problems—then what is purpose?
How does the soul define purpose—outside of the human-created systems and structures we’ve been born into?
Because my role or function is as a writer, my purpose becomes expression.
What am I here to say?
What’s the message I’m here to share?
When I make that the purpose of my writing, I can drop the functional definitions of purpose I was taught to believe.
But this idea isn’t just about my work as a writer—or even about careers in general. It’s about all of us.
What if purpose isn’t about fitting into a system or checking off boxes?
What if it’s about something deeper—something unique to each of us?
Redefining purpose opens the door to re-examining how we see the jobs we take and the roles we play. When we try to find fulfillment inside those structures, it often gets lost—because what we’re doing is functional.
It doesn’t serve the soul’s purpose.
So… how do you discover what your soul’s purpose is?
By healing the pain of living a functional life.
By questioning the systems and structures you were born into.
By not being afraid of what you might find when you start looking around.
To fully step into your soul’s purpose, you have to let go of the idea that you need to conform to the systems and structures around you.
The soul doesn’t care about those human-made constructs.
It’s not here to comply—it’s here to expand, learn, grow, and play.
When we keep our heads down and live only for functionality, we fail to honor the soul within us—and fulfillment becomes something that never quite arrives.
Maybe instead of asking, “What’s my life purpose?” we should be asking, “What would fulfill me?”
Whether fulfillment comes through your career or something you do for yourself outside of work, it’s that feeling of joy and alignment that truly matters.
Sure, survival demands we take on certain functional roles and responsibilities. But life isn’t only meant to be functional.
We have to keep ourselves on our own priority lists—making self-care less about manicures and massages and more about finding real fulfillment through connection with ourselves.
It’s only by healing and reconnecting with who we are that we can begin to piece together what fulfillment really means—for us.
Fulfillment isn’t functional.
It probably won’t solve a problem or meet a need.
But it will make you happy.
And that’s what makes life worth the trip.
Love to all.
Della