Lubna Alli

Today an old friend of mine asked me how I am.

“I am content,” I answered.

Not happy, not sad, but somewhere in the middle. Happy with my achievements, comfortable with the things I own and the car I drive, passionate about my studies, blessed with an amazing set of friends, family and confidants, but yet, still I am not completely whole.

“I’m lacking purpose,” I told her.

Purpose. This all-encompassing, glorified, be-all-end-all thing that every millennial seems to talk about. Without it, you’re doomed and with it, you’re saved. I didn’t know where I stood on the spectrum, but all I knew was that I needed it to feel like I was doing something right.

In some ways, I feel that like I lack purpose because I lack direction. An excellent metaphor for that being my day today, where I was bouncing from opportunity to opportunity like a mad woman trying to cover all bases. At the Career Fair first, where I talked to banks, businesses, and governments about prospective employment. All seemed to like me and I seemed to like all.

Then along came Nasma. Oh wait, but I also love tech and coding. Shit, guess we’ll add that to the pile of things I’m into. Then is when I sit back and look at the things I’m both hireable for and love and I become conflicted, as so the story for every 4th year goes.

Nasma talked about the zig-zag trajectory in which she lives her life, taking opportunities as they come to her. In some ways, this has also been my story. I’m never quite happy in one place for too long, and I always need to feel challenged in what I’m doing in order to retain interest. Without climbing the corporate ladder like most, I fell into my job at Scotiabank’s head office by mere luck and finesse.

I told the recruiter I was looking to put myself out of my comfort zone and assured her that I was a quick learner. She must’ve seen something in me to hire me as the youngest in the team and the department. As Nasma said, you’ve got to bullshit your way through to get past the doors. Once I was through, there was a learning curve and I was overwhelmed, barely able to sleep properly at nights at a time for the first few weeks.

But soon enough, like with anything, I became bored. I learned how to do the job and I enjoyed the bragging rights of having made it corporate, but ultimately I wasn’t happy. I wanted out. Everyone thought I was crazy for giving up the dream, otherwise known as comfort, security and stability. I told my mom I was too young to be pampered and cushioned by life. This wasn’t the end for me. I needed to get out there and see what the world had to offer. I had a fat list of things I wanted to accomplish before I was 30—heck before I died—and I was only getting started.

So, when the 9th of May rolled around I sent in my letter of resignation, packed up all my belongings, and headed for the airport the following day. I was letting go of all my comforts, my family, my friends, my job, that dumb boy—everything. It would be 4 months, 10 countries, and nearing 50 cities later that I’d arrive back home. I would’ve travelled to 5 countries and 7 cities by myself, going to a completely new country with strangers, bungee jumping 14 stories off of a bridge, and even simply just crying myself to sleep in an overpriced London hotel room the size of a shoebox.

The whole point of the trip was to find this so-called purpose, yet I felt as though I came back more confused and overwhelmed than ever. In the process of finding myself, I solidified more things about myself that I liked, and others that I didn’t. For one, I liked business and I liked dissecting case studies and I liked consulting. For two, I liked travelling and I liked adventure and I liked the rush of being on the go. For three, I liked being around people, bouncing ideas, collaborating, and giving back.

Upon my return home I knew what I needed to do, and I willfully continued to do so in hopes of securing the next goal: a summer internship in my field working with the government. I took coding classes, went to workshops, and even attended schmoozy networking events, all to secure this newfound, yet short term, “purpose” of mine.

Purpose, I later realized, was what I used to mask my implicit selfishness. In this concerted effort to find purpose and give back in an honest way, I was doing quite the opposite. I was self-sabotaging and I definitely wasn’t being entirely honest with myself.

This want to do more was not purely altruistic in nature, but rather self-motivated and self-interested. Yes, I cared about serving a larger purpose, but I almost cared about it because it was supposed to bring me this sense of heightened prestige, and stature. Now that I’ve come to this realization, I don’t know how I am supposed to reconcile and regroup. We’re all implicitly selfish and self-motivated, but does it make us bad people because we need to help others in order to help ourselves?