It's purpose that infuses things with a kind of life energy that is related to individuation.

There's no acorn that wants to just stay an acorn and, you know, kind of lull about in the sun.

Every acorn wants to become an oak tree.

It's better than being eaten by a squirrel.

It is through challenge and meaning and purpose and, dare I add, suffering.

Welcome to this Jungian life. Three good friends and Jungian analysts, Lisa Marchiano,

Deborah Stewart, and Joseph Lee invite you to join them for an intimate and honest conversation

that brings a psychological perspective to important issues of the day. I'm Lisa Marchiano, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.

I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst, on Cape Cod.

Thank you. Today we are going to talk about purpose.

The dictionary says that purpose is something set up as an object or end to be attained, an intention.

And how do we figure out what that might be? What is the object? What is our intention?

There are so many things on all the self-help shelves and our cultural inclination to set up to-do lists of healthy habits and how to build skills and all the rest of it, very extroverted.

We are very much a doing practical kind of culture.

But Jung and others have a deeper and more soulful idea about finding one's real purpose,

and that's what we're going to circumambulate. Well, you know, that's an interesting place to start.

And I think I'm going to sort of complexify it right away.

Because arguably, arguably, we all kind of yearn for a sense of purpose.

And that can be, that can be even like a really small thing. Like I remember

when my kids were little, obviously you feel a sense of purpose like parenting, right? That's a kind of

a grand purpose in a way. However, I will tell you that on the sort of level of the day to day,

...