On Healing & Purpose
I’ve been avoiding writing my first instalment of a newsletter for a few days now because it felt like my purpose hadn’t quite crystallized yet. Why write a newsletter at all? What can I provide that people would find interesting and useful?
I had a conversation with my friend over breakfast yesterday morning that changed that a little for me. Things took a turn and began to be a bit more clear.
It all started with a box of Brittania cookies made in India by a British food supply company—the most popular brand of cookies in the nation.
She spoke of the lasting impact of British colonialism in India. Every once in a while, political leaders in India attempt to seek reparations from the British government for the historical and ongoing damage caused by colonialism. Whether they succeed or fail seems almost immaterial—there’s still an entire nation’s needs to address. Perhaps healing and purpose doesn’t come from external validation.
We can apply the same argument on an individual level. Childhood traumas that follow us into adulthood eventually become a choice: either you choose to continue to react to an internal reality or you challenge those internal beliefs and find a path towards healing.
My initial thesis: healing and purpose come from within and must include a certain level of acceptance of the imperfection of life.
We see evidence of this thinking in our workplaces. At a department meeting this past week, my coworkers and I were advised that while we can’t control political leaders or foreign wars, we can control how we show up for work each day.
This sentiment was challenged by a personal story my friend shared that meant we don’t have to accept atrocities as normal.
I shared a story about someone I admire: Amanda Nguyen is an astronaut and the first Vietnamese woman in space. She was raped as a student at Harvard University and went on to draft the Sexual Assault Survivors’ Rights Act, which passed unanimously through the United States Congress and was signed into law by President Obama in 2016. Her work in civil rights earned her a Nobel Peace Prize nomination in 2019.
On the heels of Amanda’s story came my second thesis: healing and purpose come from helping our communities’ current and future members survive and thrive, they come from making the world a more fair and equitable place.
However, everyone has different life circumstances: some can follow in Amanda’s footsteps and affect change at the federal level while others cannot.
Third thesis: healing and purpose comes from living in alignment with your values when you have the capacity.
My friend and I parted for the day, but the conversation still rang in my ears. I began to critically examine what I spend my time on each day and whether it is in alignment with my personal values. What I found was actually a little surprising to me, though probably not to those who know me well.
I found that I want to help people.
This is fundamentally what my new business is to me: using my time and skills to help those around me be successful in their creative and business endeavours. For those who don’t know, I’m attempting to start a small business helping people using my tech skills.
This is also what this newsletter is to me: an opportunity to explore the world around me—the silly and the serious—to discover what is meaningful to me and my community through expression. And then to act on it!
What are your thoughts on healing and connecting with purpose?