What is our purpose? What are we here for? What should we do if we're aiming to live the best, most fitting life? These are, needless to say, fundamental human questions, questions that sit at the cornerstone of philosophy and religious

life, and questions that are taken up by the best works of poetry and literature. The mere asking

of questions like these is itself an exercise of a uniquely human capacity. Well, here's one way

we could begin to investigate the question of human purpose.

There are many great traditions that believe that the answer to human purpose lies outside

of the self. In fact, most traditional religious forms and classical and pre-modern philosophical

traditions tend to see in the great tableau of existence,

of being, of creation, they tend to see mankind as small, not at the center, but a part of nature

or the created order. That's not to say that we're unimportant, but it is to say that what is good

for us is to be found by calibrating ourselves to the good of the world.

I know that sounds a little abstract, but let me illustrate what I mean through the Christian

example of vocation. The word vocation comes from the Latin word that means to summon, and

many Christians believe that if a person can suppress their desire, can govern their

passions, can quiet the chaos and sin inside of them, then they'll be able to hear, often

through prayer, a call from God, from outside of ourselves, a call that summons us to

some vocation or another, to dedicate our life to marriage and family,

or the clergy, or a particular profession. Now, the Jewish tradition too establishes an encompassing

world of covenantal obligations whose many laws and ordinances discipline the self. We answer our

highest purposes, not alone, but in transmitting a moral order and a

national history from our ancestors to our children, helping them to know the creator of the universe

and what he demands of us. This is a world in which the individual is present, for it is as an

individual that every person is created in the image and likeness of God,

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