Finding Purpose When Meaning Feels Far

"I think I've lost my sense of purpose," Lena whispered.

We gave the sentence a pause to settle. We sat for a while. Lena's voice was thin at first, then ste

adier on the second try, "Yeah, there is an emptiness that just loops 'What is even the point?'"

She started making the laundry list to fight the feeling for a moment: she'd worked more hours, put in more effort, done more reading, made more lists. The harder she tried, the farther away meaning seemed to feel. There was no crisis to point to, just a long, slow drift. She exhaled and looked down.

"What does the emptiness want you to notice that you haven't yet?" I wondered aloud. The question hung silently for a moment. Then, she smiled slightly, and her hand rose to her heart.

"Breakfast," she said. "I like sitting with my kid before school." We let that stand in the silence, too.

Something in the air steadied. Lena nodded like she was hearing herself for the first time in days. After a minute, her words returned on their own. "I want more of that. People. Conversations that aren't rushed. I want to work with voices, not only with documents. I want to curate spaces of belonging for people." She blinked, surprised that the words had lined up so simply.

We did not analyze. We listened for what opened. The restlessness that had been tugging at Lena's attention transformed into a quiet sense of direction.

She tested the words again, slower. "I want to create spaces of belonging." Her shoulders settled by a finger's width. A small inner clarity was here, ordinary, almost shy. It did not arrive as a plan to conquer or acquire. It arrived as a felt freedom to embrace something already present.  

In the days that followed, she paid attention to when that steadiness returned and when it faded. She did not chase it. She noticed it. The small clarity kept pointing in the same direction: toward time that held real presence, toward work that let her be with people, toward moments that left her and the people around her more human. The sentence "I've lost my sense of purpose" wasn't a fight for Lena to escape, but a doorway to deep joy rising up within her.

Nothing dramatic happened. A little more space appeared inside, and new

possibilities came with it. Gratitude began to appear, and freedom felt possible in inches. That was the light Lena needed to see her purpose expanding.

I've seen inner clarity arrive this way many times: plain, local, embodied. Not as a slogan or a big answer, but as a quiet recognition that loosens the body by a hair and gives expression to a simple desire that has been waiting in the soul. When it comes, it is subtle. It does not dominate. It opens.

If "I feel I've lost my sense of purpose" sits close to you, you don't need to force anything. Wonder with it about how it wants to change. Be present to it as it raises deeper values to the surface. Notice where this joins a sense of freedom, joy, or gratitude in your body. Often, that is where you begin to find purpose again.

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Live and Lead with Soul,

     Ben Shoup