One of my greatest frustrations in life is observing injustice. It frustrates me to see people hurting others, and other people allowing themselves to be hurt. I feel that the older I get the more compassionate I become. I care now more than I did years ago.

The issue I have with this newfound compassion is that it seems to disregard a very basic belief I have, that we are all here because we choose to be; that we chose our lives, and all the experiences within it, good and bad, for what those experiences would teach us.

For a long time I've looked at the effects of injustice as the results of choices that began before birth. I've seen that people are choosing lives of peace, hardship, and even horror; lives of ignorance, war, killing or being killed; lives of poverty, wealth, mediocrity or fame. All the experiences we could possibly have on this earth are being chosen by us before we are born.

Which leads me to ask: since I believe everyone's lives are a result of their own choices, why do I get so angry when I see people being hurt, or hurting others?

William Shakespear once said:

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players
They have their exits and their entrances
And one man in his time plays many parts...

What is our part? Our purpose? What are we meant to do in our lives? This, too, is our choice, which we made before birth. We know what we want to do with our lives, and we spend a great deal of time working up to doing it. Sometimes we get sidetracked, which just means we have to do it again in a different life. When we complete it, we die and then choose another life, with another purpose.

I believe that the greatest purpose in life is to be of benefit to others, to help others achieve their own potential, their own purpose. People do this in so many ways. They may become paramedics, nurses, doctors, police, firemen, counselors, therapists, authors, teachers, religious leaders, etc etc. The list is long.

The older I get, the more committed I'm becoming to helping people to find their own purpose. I think that one of the side effects of this is that I'm caring more about people. I'm caring more about what they're experiencing, and I want to help them find their answers and their happiness.

I want to be their guide, helping them out of the quagmire of injustice that they're part of. This is my purpose.

Categories: Philosophy