Purpose and Value

In the search for significance, many question the purpose of life. Why am I here? What was I made to do? What am I meant to accomplish?

Get me talking for any length of time, and I'll eventually start talking about purpose. "Purpose orders pain and pleasure," I'll say, "transforming fleeting happiness into lasting joy, meaningless suffering into powerful sacrifice." I have little doubt that there is indeed a purpose to my, and everyone else's, life. Finding purpose bestows power, cultivates fortitude, and fosters energy. Purpose it more valuable than nearly anything else.

All that being said, it is not purpose that makes your life valuable. Nothing ever made this so clear as my nephew Connor.

Connor was fatally brain damaged at birth. What had been an otherwise healthy pregnancy was botched in the delivery room. Faulty monitoring prevented the doctor from responding to dropping blood pressure. The acidity of Connor's blood rose unchecked. When he was finally born by way of the suction device on his head, his acrid blood had destroyed his brain.

Of course, we knew none of this at the time. All we knew was that there was something wrong. Put immediately on life support, Connor was rushed to the best children's hospital in 250 miles. For five days the machines pumped his lungs. The doctors ran tests. Mom and Dad cried. I read him the Hobbit. On the fifth day, the electroencephalograph determined that he had no brain function and never would.

It was Mom, Dad, both Grandmas, and myself in that little room when the doctor brought in Connor, his lungs hooked up to an hand pump gently worked by the nurse's gloved hand. We each held this child in our arms as the pump rasped away. Each saying good bye in our own way. Surrounded by a sea of language, and not a drop that could comfort us or him.

When they pulled out the pump, the final act that would cause this little child to suffocate and die, the room entered into what I can only describe as a twilight. Tony's in agony, repeating over and over, "This is fucked, this is fucked, this is fucked." My mom and Danielle's mom are trying to comfort their children. And Danielle holds her child, asking for nothing more than to have him back inside her.

Connor died in our arms.

Now, if you want to tell me that it is our accomplishments that give our lives value, then you have to look me in the eye and tell me that Connor's life had none. He never walked, he never talked, he never went to school, he never earned a living, he never had children of his own. Apart from the time he spent in the womb, he never even experienced the world. By nearly every measurement of purpose I know my nephew failed.

But his life had value. Not because of some end that he worked for, or some task that he performed, but an immediate, vivid, unstoppable value that sprang up from his life itself. He was not made significant by some calling, or a place in a grand design. He was significant because he was at all.

Never functionalize your humanity. You violate the sanctity that wells up in every moment. Your life has value, priceless value, far beyond anything you could ever say or do. Your successes and failures are important, but they are important because of the way they fit into a long term plan. But you, you have worth that flows out of your being, even as you read this.

Never functionalize the humanity of others. Just as you should never feel without worth, at no moment are the lives of others mere tools to be used. Springing from them is a miraculous and divine value.

Purpose? Generally I say, go get some. It really helps make sucky things not so bad and awesome things even better. But that purpose isn't going to make you more valuable. You have within you a worth that is beyond words. Trust me on this one. Sitting in that little room, holding my nephew, a twilight child, I searched for the words. There aren't any. You, me, and Connor all have the same, boundless price. A value that cannot be traded for anything else.

No task you could ever perform could increase it, and no failure could ever decrease it.