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A 2026 meta-analysis found that strong purpose predicts significantly lower mortality.

Purpose is something you forage for again and again, as your life and values shift over time.

Each life stage calls for foraging purpose differently, from adolescence through older adulthood.

Comparing your purpose to someone else's is the fastest way to lose sight of your own.

Are you waiting to find your life purpose like you wait for a lightning strike? Perhaps you are hoping that someday you will just be walking along, and it will hit you like a bolt of lightning: what you are supposed to be doing on the planet.

I think of finding purpose more like foraging than being hit by lightning.

It takes skill, and you get better with practice.

It can be fun, and it’s even more fun with friends.

You’ll get hungry for purpose again.

In different seasons of life, foraging for purpose looks different.

Purpose, broadly, is the pursuit of personally significant, future-oriented goals. We often build purpose little by little, in our connection with and service to humans, creatures, communities, and the land. We discover purpose in actions that spark joy and serve our values. Some of us are lucky enough to get paid for work we find purposeful; many of us need to be more creative, accumulating purpose little by little. Purpose isn’t just found in our actions, but in the way we perform them (perhaps lovingly, carefully, creatively, energetically?).

Our emotions often point the way. Joy can let us know we are engaged in something meaningful. Anger can reveal something that matters enough to fight for. Fear can show us what we want to protect. Guilt can surface a purpose we’ve neglected. Sadness can mark the loss of a relationship that once gave us purpose.

Over time, we can gather a whole harvest from the meaning we’ve foraged in our many roles, from our work, to our play, to our loving. Because our roles and relationships are constantly changing, we will never stop foraging for purpose. The more we practice searching for purpose and savoring a sense of purpose when we find it, the better we get at the skill of “purposing.”

People With a Strong Sense of Purpose Live Longer

This year, a meta-analysis combining eight longitudinal studies (data from 488,765 people tracked for up to 32 years) found that a strong sense of purpose predicted roughly a 30........

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