Storm of Purpose

“When the cold front of demographics meets the warm front of unrealized dreams, the result will be a thunderstorm of purpose the likes of which the world has never seen.” (133)
- From Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink

In Colorado we witness many types of storms this time of year. During the four days of my sister’s recent visit we offended her Californian sensibilities with vigorous thunder and lightning, sheets of rain, hail, and even a final hot day offering flurries of cottonwood tree cotton. Today the mercury will hit ninety-two degrees and the draining heat makes it difficult to meet the challenges of mothering – and almost impossible to face the larger troubles spelled out in newspaper headlines or internet news briefs. Natural disasters, ongoing wars, recovery efforts and partisan bickering leave me gasping for fresh air, looking for some mental and spiritual refreshment. In recent days I have found my “lemonade of the soul” in Daniel Pink’s book, Drive.

Pink’s work addresses the science of what truly motivates human beings. Studies dating back decades reveal that monetary rewards are not the best motivators. Beyond a certain income baseline, people are most fueled by autonomy, mastery and purpose. For a quick video overview, you can visit (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc&feature=player_embedded).

In the most recent chapter I’ve read, Pink focuses on the number of baby boomers reaching sixty. He offers, “at the beginning of the twenty-first century, anyone who’s healthy enough to have made it six decades is probably healthy enough to hang on a fair bit longer” (132) as in twenty or more years. (Are you reading this, Dad?) How does this relate to my heat and headline trauma? Read on . . .

Pink notes that anyone who has the accumulated wisdom of sixty or so years learns past to look past the profit motive and search for work with a purpose: work that will change the world. I can provide my father as an example; his work for his city and county takes him to meetings every day on a volunteer basis and he has enabled the local area to build a brand new food pantry to feed those living in hunger. He finds and writes grants, raises money, and educates himself and others to the need around him. Thanks to folks like my dad, I can sit here writing with a cup of tea and feel like the world won’t totally go to pot in my mental absence.

Here’s a thought: “the planet very soon will contain more people over age sixty-five than under age five for the first time in its existence, (and) the timing couldn’t be better.” (144) I promise not to abdicate my own volunteer responsibilities at the thought of vast armies of purposeful, talented and experienced individuals taking on the plight of the world, but I am grateful for the thought of these reinforcing armies. I am relieved to think that the science proves humans are intrinsically motivated by purpose. I am hopeful that – as summer heat and window-clogging cotton will eventually relent – the troubles of the early 21st century may be washed away in a thunderstorm of purpose.



Additional thought: In a follow-up to my post on the Tom Petty concert (Rocking Out - A Rare Late Night), I wanted to post this quote by Willie Nelson as written in Sunday (6/29) Parade Magazine: "Death is not the end of anything. I believe all of us are only energy that becomes matter. When the matter goes away, the energy still exists. You can't destroy it. It never dies. It manifests itself somewhere else."