“Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.” – Helen Keller
There are a great many purposes to which you can dedicate your life. Some purposes will prove to broaden the scope of human achievement while others will bring man closer to knowing the true meaning of life.
Material progress does not necessarily correlate with spiritual advancement, neither are the two mutually exclusive. The purpose of man, to put it simply, is to safeguard the connection between the spiritual and the material, the invisible and the visible. Absent this connection, the world is disconnected from its source and man is left ruler over a dying kingdom in which light makes only the darkness visible.
Fidelity to a worthy purpose is the only means by which true, lasting happiness is known. Anything else may produce a sense of gratification, but it will be shallow and fleeting. You have two central responsibilities in life: 1) to become aware of the purpose of your being and 2) to remain loyal to it.
The rest is just details…
Fidelity to a worthy purpose does bring dignity and sensibility. Helen Keller was such an example. So let it be with us all.
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It really is no more complicated than this. You have given us many bits of advice on how to discover our unique facet of the purpose that we all share, we have to live our life in a way that lets us uncover that. The path to the discovery of purpose, whether for you or for me, lies in the choices that we make in the many moments that make up every day. If we handle those right, our overall lives are handled correctly.
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The longer I live the more I see this is absolutely true. My fellows that have been careful to construct the life they wanted and those that have “flown by the seat of their pants” seem to have ended with little difference, if any, in their happiness. The divergence was their level of commitment to what they had felt was a worthy purpose. I see there comes another reckoning as the worthiness of our choice of purpose is revealed to each. Taking the time to discover individual purpose is like finding your compass to keep you on the path of radiant fulfillment. Helen Keller’s quote illustrates her amazing mind. It appears without the distraction of her senses of sight and hearing she may have listened more closely to her higher self.
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Fidelity seems to be in short supply in the world today, along with a sense of purpose. The yearning for purpose may be prevalent, but how many people actually dedicate their lives to learning what it is and then staying faithful to it? I’d guess not many.
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