The Gasps of Your Strangled Purpose

The Lion Raised by Sheep

The sun rose atop the African savanna, like a marble made of lightning, like coagulated sincerity, like a pristine cosmic orifice. And if indeed it were a cosmic orifice, then its first rays were direct and precise sniper-farts catching a pair of moist amber eyes as they opened for the very first time; eyes belonging to a newborn lion cub.

If Jesus was born amidst a miracle, then this poor lion cub was born amidst a massacre – one that would have made Edward Scissor-Hands green in the face as he reached for a bucket. Our lion cub rolled and whimpered, with still-wet blood splattered across its fur as if Hades and Kali had been playing a drunken game of naughts and crosses. These pints of scarlet life-juice belonged to the cub’s parents, whose crumpled, silent bodies lay on either side of it – killed by other lions in a savage territorial dispute mere minutes earlier.

It was at this juncture that our cub’s life took yet another potent yet unusual turn. You see, a nearby flock of sheep was trotting by, ebulliently anticipating their very first grazing session of the day. And although these animals are known to have at least as much wool in their heads as on their backs, what is less well known is that the tenderness of their hearts far exceeds the sum of their inner and outer shagginess. The perfervid sheep spotted the cub, squirming as he was amidst what looked like the aftermath of a broken-glass-eating-elephant’s shart, and plucked it up with aching hearts, taking our young hero with them. And in the weeks and months that followed, they raised him alongside their own young. The cub learnt to walk like a sheep, to eat like a sheep, and even to baaa like a sheep. And meanwhile, the cub’s natural apex instincts—its confidence, its leadership, its fierce sense of self—became muted and dormant beneath this early conditioning.

One day, the cub trotted alone, a little way from the flock, munching on grass, and was found by an older lion. The cub cowered and trembled at the sight of this fierce creature. This lion’s eyes widened in both surprise and disgust—how could a creature born to rule the savannah behave so timidly, so meekly, baa-ing like a sheep? The older lion shook its head, and then lifted the cub by the scruff of its neck and led it to a still lake. Peering into the water, the cub saw its own image for the first time. Rather than seeing a sheep looking back at it, it instead saw golden eyes, strong muscles and a luscious mane. For the first time, it recognized itself as it truly was.

As it saw its reflection, something inside the cub stirred. Its instincts, long suppressed, tingled back to life. And then, with a surge of power and recognition, the cub threw back its head and let out a roar.

This story isn’t just a fable—it mirrors many modern lives. From an early age, we are taught to fit in, meet expectations, and follow external measures of success. Our deeper nature, our deeper desires, our curiosity and sense of direction, can easily get muted.

And now, right as our purpose is needed more than ever to address the challenges of the 21st century – climate change, artificial intelligence, rising authoritarianism, rising mental ill health – forces of the modern world are operating on us to keep our purpose even more obscured.

This year, in 2026, I have been astonished at how many incredible people I know – talented people, intelligent people, compassionate people, creative people – are depressed, are stagnating, are floundering, are lacking in direction, purpose and momentum. It seems as if purposeless has become somewhat of an epidemic.

The present article explores this troubling phenomenon and charts the modern forces that seem to be contributing to our aimlessness. Because I am of the view that, just like the lion cub, our authentic purpose does still lie within us, dormant, awaiting the opportunity to come back alive. The art of “embodied purpose” – introduced at the end of this piece – can guide us in rediscovering this essence within – our own soul’s roar – and bringing it to fruition in all areas of life.

So First of All – What Do We Mean by Purpose?

Purpose is your reason for being. But it’s not just one thing – like being a president or an astronaut. No. We are multi-faceted beings, and we can live with purpose in many areas of life. Tending our garden can be part of our purpose, being a good son can be part of our purpose, showing a friend how to light their farts can be a part of our purpose. And purpose is also not something that we are either in alignment with, or out of alignment with, in a binary on or off way. Purpose is more like a guiding star than a distant shore – you can approach it more and more, and it can give you a sense of direction through life’s complexity, but you never truly and finally get there. You only approach it, you never arrive.

But this certainly doesn’t mean that purpose is unimportant. Purpose gives us a hunger for life. It helps us wake up, salivating for the day ahead. It gives us more vitality, momentum and drive. Often, people who are filled with purpose are a joy to be around – they are vibrant and radiant. Indeed research suggests that people with a strong sense of purpose generally tend to live longer, have greater life satisfaction, have more positive emotions, fewer negative emotions, better physical health, improved relationships and are less impacted by daily stressors – to name just a few of the benefits (Pfund & Hill, 2018).

Purpose typically involves satisfying our own needs – our desires for safety, security, belonging, recognition and growth (think, Maslow’s hierarchy). But beyond that, it flourishes when we contribute to the world around us – when we give back to others and serve causes beyond our own self. Purpose often involves identifying and cultivating our own unique gifts, attending to and pursuing the things that authentically excite and inspire us, noticing and responding to the issues in the world that most break our hearts, identifying and healing our own deepest wounding, and finding and repairing chaos and suffering in the wider world.

Knowing what purpose is though isn’t necessarily enough to make it wake up within us. If you look at the news, you will see many issues – ecological, political, social, technological – that are calling out for humanity to rise up with deep purpose to set things right. And yet, in many ways, we are dragging our heels. Why is that? I would argue that our modern culture is, in many ways, tending to blunt, strangle and scramble our sense of purpose.

Fortunately, by understanding how these modern barriers may be showing up in our own lives, we can get clues about how we might actually shift towards more purposeful living. In the next sections, we’ll meet four people whose lives illustrate these barriers.

Barrier 1 – The Inner World Atrophies When We Obsess About the Outer World

Meet Sophie. Every morning, she scrolls through Instagram while sipping her coffee, bombarded by images of luxurious vacations, perfect homes, and career accomplishments. Her friends seem to have it all together. Comparisons creep in: Am I doing enough? Is my life exciting enough? Slowly, Sophie stops listening to what truly matters to her—her creativity, her close friendships, and the small joys of everyday life. Modern culture and social media has shifted Sophie’s focus entirely outward toward curated materialism.

Having strong self-awareness and clarifying our deepest values is crucial for living with purpose. In past eras, religions and folk cultures transmitted a code of values, often emphasizing the importance of the internal journey and the cultivation of inner virtues, like compassion and wisdom. In our secular modern world, however, the closest thing we have to a shared value system is materialistic consumerism. This value system is superficial emphasizing external definitions of “success” and obscuring deeper values. Yet, we see it constantly expressed on social media. Constant exposure to social media can induct this value system within us, obscuring our connection to our own deeper values. Not only that, but this culture of constant entertainment and distraction inculcates a passive rather than purposeful orientation toward life. Indeed, research suggests excessive smartphone use is negatively correlated with purpose and higher dependence is associated with lower sense of life meaning (Klimenko et al., 2024).

Barrier 2 – The Omnipresent Stress Paper Cuts of The Modern World & Existential Overwhelm

Meet James. He wakes up to a barrage of emails, text notifications, and a to-do list that never seems to end. On top of that, he has two young children who demand constant attention, meals to prepare, and school runs to coordinate. Even when he finally sits down with a cup of coffee, his mind buzzes with unfinished tasks and looming deadlines. His evenings are spent juggling work messages, household chores, and bedtime routines. James survives but doesn’t seem to have space to thrive. Indeed, aside from meeting his responsibilities, James sometimes wonders whether he knows who he really is or what he really wants. That thread of inspiration and motivation has not been present for a long time.

Modern life is stressful. Our technologies once seemed to promise easier lives, but if anything, life has only gotten more challenging. We are always plugged in, always contactable, constantly distracted, constantly triggered by clickbait. In modern life, it’s as if our stress system is enduring frequent papercuts, or repetitive stress injuries. The probability of reporting stress nearly doubled globally between 2006 and 2023 (Canaletti et al., 2025). This modern hyperactivation of the adrenocortical stress system can lead to all kinds of negative consequences, including a dampened activation of our goal-directed dopaminergic system, and its accompanying sense of purpose. Indeed, Ishida and Okada (2006) found that more sensitive stress responses were associated with a lower sense of purpose, and Boreham and Schutte (2023) proposed that individuals who undergo stressful life events may have a shattered sense of meaning. When life is all about mere survival, we often lack the time and space to reflect on our deeper values, to cultivate broader visions for our future, and to put in place strategies towards these ends. We are stressfully reactive, not creatively proactive.

James is also concerned about the world his children will grow up in – the climate change forecast to ravage the planet, the global insecurity as democracies around the world increasingly collapse into authoritarianism, the existential threats posed by AI. James cares deeply about these issues, but when he watches the news each night, he can’t help but feel overwhelmed and despondent – what could I possibly do about this?

The constant exposure to existential threats and bad news on the media can be a further force acting to quell our sense of purpose. We start to feel like a character in an epic tragedy, at the mercy of vast forces beyond our control, with no agency. Indeed, qualitative analysis suggests that the existential threat of climate change can lead to a sense of helplessness and a paralysis to take action (Schwartz et al., 2022).

Barrier 3 – Keep Your People Happy and Don’t Rock the Boat.

Meet Aisha. She dreams of leaving her corporate job to start a social-impact project, but every conversation with her family or friends reminds her how risky it is. “What if it doesn’t work?” they ask. “You’ll regret leaving a stable career.” The fear of rejection and disapproval weighs heavily, and Aisha begins to question herself. Slowly, she puts her project ideas aside, convincing herself she isn’t ready. The pressure to conform and be “acceptable” keeps her from pursuing her own calling.

Social and familial pressures are powerful barriers to finding purpose, and there’s an evolutionary reason for that. For our ancestors, fitting in with the group was a matter of survival—being ostracized from the tribe could mean death. As a result, the human nervous system treats social rejection and shame as extremely threatening. Neuroscience research shows that social pain activates many of the same brain regions as physical pain, including the anterior cingulate cortex, making rejection feel viscerally real (Eisenberger et al., 2003). Shame, in particular, is one of the most potent regulators of behavior, often overriding rational judgment and intrinsic motivation. It triggers a cascade of stress hormones, heightens vigilance, and can immobilize action--even when the perceived “danger” is merely disapproval from a colleague or family member rather than actual physical harm. Many people internalize the expectations of those they love, fearing disapproval or social judgment, and this can interfere with a sense of purpose. Instead of following our own path, we can follow the path dictated for us by friends or family. Across multiple cultures — from Palestinian religious obligation to Cameroonian ancestral duty to Irish Catholic conformity — research shows that communally prescribed purpose can routinely override individual calling, with deviation carrying significant social cost (Rabho et al., 2023).

Barrier 4 – We Never Got to go to the Hogwarts for Getting Out Of Our Heads and Into Our Purpose

Meet Ethan. He graduated with honors, landed a decent job, and checked all the “success” boxes—but he still felt lost. No one ever taught him how to find his purpose. His parents worked jobs they didn’t love, so there was no roadmap at home. School focused on grades, not self-discovery. Left to figure it out on his own, Ethan drifts from one opportunity to the next, and despite using many “pros and cons” lists, he is unsure how to recognize or pursue what truly matters to him. People tell Ethan that he is “overthinking it”, that he is “stuck in his head” and that instead, he should “follow his bliss” and “listen to his heart”, but he has no idea how to do this.

Despite growing up in a world obsessed with achievement, few of us are given the tools to explore or cultivate our purpose. Our schools may teach us to master the external world via mathematics and science and cultivating our “heady” cognitive intelligence, but they often fail to show us how to develop deep self-awareness and somatic embodiment which is often central to clarifying our purpose (Heng & Pereira, 2023). Our materialistic, tech-saturated consumer culture further keeps us out of our bodies and in our heads. For all of these reasons, students may leave the question of purpose until after formal education (e.g. Moran, 2018). It doesn’t need to be this way. Purpose can be trained. And past education systems seemed to more holistically train this faculty, such as the Buddhist Nalanda University of 5th-12th century AD, or Plato’s Academy 4th century BCE - 5th century AD. Purpose can be trained, but in some ways, we seem to have forgotten how to do it.

Awakening Your Own Roar

The mouse-soul is nothing but a nibbler.
To the mouse is given a mind
proportionate to its need,”
for without need, the All-Powerful
doesn’t give anything to anyone.
Need, then, is the net for all things that exist.
A person has tools in proportion to his need
So, quickly, increase your need, needy one,
that the sea of abundance
may surge up in loving-kindness.

-Rumi

As we have seen, the modern world presents all kinds of barriers which can latch onto our neck and vampirically suck the lifeblood out of our sense of purpose. And yet, there is hope. Recognising these barriers is often the first step to peeling these purpose-vampires off our throat, and casting them off onto the ground.

The good news is that purpose is a skill that we can all learn and train. It doesn’t require ideal external circumstances – in fact, sometimes external adversity can be fuel for inner purpose. If enough of us learn these skills, then I believe that our world will be transformed in a very positive way – we will rise to meet the challenges of the 21st century with flying colours.

And so, no matter how disempowered you feel, I can assure you that deeper purpose is lying within you, awaiting the opportunity to come forth.

There are many ways to practice purpose, and you might even like to join our deep dive 6 week course on meditation for embodied purpose – Your Soul’s Roar. But for now, I want to leave you with one core skill for purpose.

Dream. Dream big. Give yourself time and space to reflect on the things in life that have inspired you. On what the themes are for your sources of inspiration. Of how that inspiration felt in your body and showed up in your thoughts. Think about what your deepest values are. And once you’ve done all of that, envision best possible future scenarios in every area of life. In your work. In your finances. In your relationships. In your health. In your spirituality. In your contribution to the world. Totally go for it.

You might feel afraid of the future for various reasons. That’s normal and okay. But see if you can dream so big about positive things that these positive visions outweigh your fears for the future. Let your hunger be greater than your fear, your purpose-salivation greater than your anxiety-sweat. As Rumi would say, increase your need, oh needy one!

OK, that’s all for now! In the next blog, we will much more thoroughly explore the skills for embodied purpose. Hope to see you there.

Raaahhhhhhhh!

Further Resources

Purpose Rising is a great and comprehensive book that includes the voices of numerous experts and thought leaders regarding how to cultivate purpose.

Reference List

Boreham, I., & Schutte, N.S. (2023). The relationship between purpose in life and depression and anxiety: A meta-analysis. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 79(12), 2736–2767.

Canaletti, E.F., Lun, P., Chan, M., & Cheung, F. (2025). Rising tide of stress: Global trends and structural predictors over 18 years. SSM — Population Health, 30, 101768. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmph.2025.101768

Eisenberger, N.I., Lieberman, M.D., & Williams, K.D. (2003). Does rejection hurt? An fMRI study of social exclusion. Science, 302(5643), 290–292. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1089134

Heng, M.A., & Pereira, A.J. (2023). Youth purpose as the basis for a purpose-driven vision of schooling in Singapore. In Moving beyond grades to purposeful learning (pp. 41–59). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-4705-8_3

Ishida, R., & Okada, M. (2006). Effects of a firm purpose in life on anxiety and sympathetic nervous activity caused by emotional stress: Assessment by psycho-physiological method. Stress and Health, 22(4), 275–281. https://doi.org/10.1002/smi.1095

Klimenko, O., Muñoz-Figueroa, J.A., Hernández-Flórez, N., Arroyave-Jaramillo, D.L., Londoño-Vásquez, D.A., Lhoeste-Charris, Á., & Gutiérrez-Vega, I. (2024). Smartphone dependency and its relationship with the meaning of life, psychological well-being and self-regulation in a sample of university students. Journal of Positive Psychology & Wellbeing, 8(1), 36–54.

Medhi, M., & Bharadwaj, I.U. (2026). Timelessness, freedom and the heroic struggle: How do young adults in Delhi experience meaning in life? Journal of Constructivist Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1080/10720537.2026.2634101

Moran, S. (2018). Purpose-in-action education: Introduction and implications. Journal of Moral Education, 47(2). https://doi.org/10.1080/03057240.2018.1444001

Pfund, G.N., & Hill, P.L. (2018). The multifaceted benefits of purpose in life. International Forum for Logotherapy, 41(1), 27–37.

Rabho, L., de Vries, M., & Miller, D. (2023). Life purpose in the age of the smartphone: Reflections from comparative anthropology. Anthropology & Aging, 44(2), 75–86. https://doi.org/10.5195/aa.2023.423

Schwartz, S.E.O., Benoit, L., Clayton, S., Parnes, M.F., Swenson, L., & Lowe, S.R. (2022). Climate change anxiety and mental health: Environmental activism as buffer. Current Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-02735-6