Of Purpose and N/As

Even in my seeming retreat from the world at large, things still tend to leak in - even within my own world.

The news about Google changing its structure sank into even my world with a bit of a shock.  One has followed Google, of course, even if they are not always my most favorite company in the world.  They have indeed do a great number of things and seek to do a great many more.  A new parent holding company, a listing of their ongoing ventures - quite heady stuff indeed.

And then as I read it and pondered it, I suddenly took at look at what I was doing for the day:  lining through documents with an "N/A", page after page after page.  Hardly the stuff of world class innovation.

What did I want to do once upon time?  When I got of college or even before?  What were my goals, my dreams?  I do not know that they were so formally thought out as such - but am at least sure that they were, in some way, doing something heroic and making the world a better place.

I am always grateful when stories like this happen, mostly because somewhere in my soul there is a stirring to recapture something of that magic.  Those goals of changing the world, of making the world better, of being heroic.  It is good to know that somehow those things have not fully died.

At the same time, it also makes me ask the question:  why am I here?

Duty, of course.  But duty is somewhat of a harsh master followed long enough.  It grinds us down and steals our time, leaving only dull sensation of having done what needed to be done.  Without something beyond this, something that we can point to and say "The world is better because of this", it can leave us dry and brittle.

So what would doing something meaningful like that work like?  I do not have even a partial clarity on it at the present time.  But I do know a few things, like spending almost two hours a day driving to somewhere that reviewing paperwork and entering "N/A" in blanks in paperwork is hardly the sort of thing that is making the world changed or better or heroic.

So I need to ask better questions.  And find an answer.  And move forward.  Or be prepared to explain why "N/A" somehow made a huge difference.