Obama gave an answer in his Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee episode that stuck with me.
Seinfeld asked something like 'How do you deal with constant annoyances, all the time, when you're president?'
And Obama replied 'I expect it's similar to what you do -- you fall in love with the work. Sure, sometimes it's painful, annoying, backwards, foolish, etc. But in the end you fall in love with the work, and it saves you.'
That defined purpose in a way I'd never thought about it, and probably undergirds every religion.
It also made me try to open my heart more to people dealing with chronic pain or mental health issues, in terms of their subjective effort. Objectively, it may look like they're just doing {normal thing}, but subjectively that may be requiring 10x or 100x effort from them. And that effort (the work) deserves its own respect, independent of outome.
Seinfeld asked something like 'How do you deal with constant annoyances, all the time, when you're president?'
And Obama replied 'I expect it's similar to what you do -- you fall in love with the work. Sure, sometimes it's painful, annoying, backwards, foolish, etc. But in the end you fall in love with the work, and it saves you.'
That defined purpose in a way I'd never thought about it, and probably undergirds every religion.
It also made me try to open my heart more to people dealing with chronic pain or mental health issues, in terms of their subjective effort. Objectively, it may look like they're just doing {normal thing}, but subjectively that may be requiring 10x or 100x effort from them. And that effort (the work) deserves its own respect, independent of outome.