The Myth of the Lightning Bolt: Why Purpose Isn’t Found—It’s Built
Why Waiting for Your ‘Big Purpose’ Is Like Waiting for Your Uber Pool to Arrive: It’s Never Coming, and Now You’re Just Standing in the Rain Holding a Half-Eaten Burrito
Most of us grew up waiting for the moment.
You know the one: the cinematic scene where the music swells, the camera zooms in on your wide eyes, and suddenly—bam—you know what you were put on this earth to do. A calling. An epiphany. A lightning bolt of clarity that turns a wandering life into a straight, glowing path.
It’s a beautiful story. It’s also almost entirely false.
After coaching hundreds of people through career changes, existential crises, and “what the heck am I doing with my life” spirals, I can tell you this with confidence: almost nobody gets the lightning bolt. The people who seem to have one usually admit—years later, usually over coffee—that the story got polished in the retelling.
Real purpose doesn’t arrive fully formed. It’s not discovered under a rock or delivered by a burning bush. It’s grown, one deliberate choice at a time, from the raw material that’s already in your hands.
The Shift That Changes Everything
Here’s the reframe that turned my own life (and many of my clients’ lives) upside down:
Stop searching for purpose.
Start creating meaning.
Searching for purpose assumes it’s a hidden treasure buried somewhere “out there”—in the right job, the right city, the right relationship, the right passion project. You dig and dig, waiting for the shovel to hit the chest.
Creating meaning assumes something radically different: every single situation you’re already in is clay. The boring job, the difficult relationship, the side project that feels pointless, the failure that still stings—those aren’t detours or waiting rooms. They’re the exact material you’re meant to shape.
When you make that shift, the question changes from
“What’s my purpose?” (passive, cosmic, overwhelming)
to
“How can I bring meaning to this?” (active, immediate, doable)
And suddenly everything becomes usable.
The Barista Who Built a Movement
I once knew with an individual who was 18 months into a barista job he hated. He’d studied international relations in college, dreamed of working at the UN, and now spent his days steaming oat milk and apologizing for slow service. Classic “lost” story.
He was wanting to “find his purpose” so he could quit.
Instead of hunting for the next shiny thing, he started an experiment: for 90 days, treat the cafe as his laboratory for meaning-making. Ask during every shift: “How can I turn this into something that matters?”
He started small. He memorized the regulars’ actual life stories instead of just their orders. He left tiny handwritten notes on cups when someone looked like they were having a rough day. He organized a “pay-it-forward” board that raised $4,000 for a customer going through cancer treatment. He began hosting Thursday night “world issues” discussions after close with whoever wanted to stay.
Two years later he did leave the cafe—but not because he “found” his purpose elsewhere. He left to start a non-profit that trains service-industry workers to become community organizers in their own neighborhoods. The purpose didn’t descend from heaven. It was built, cup by cup, conversation by conversation, from the exact situation he once despised.
The Everyday Alchemy Toolkit
You don’t need a dramatic situation to start. Here are the questions I now give everyone who feels stuck:
What’s already in front of me that I’ve been treating as a problem to escape instead of material to shape?
Where am I waiting for permission, clarity, or better circumstances before I invest real care?
If I decided this [job / relationship / project / failure] was the perfect raw material for the exact purpose I’m meant to grow, how would I engage with it differently tomorrow?
Meaning-making is a muscle. The more you flex it in small moments, the stronger it gets. The barista who treats surly customers as practice in radical empathy. The middle manager who turns soul-crushing meetings into experiments in human connection. The parent who decides that 3 a.m. diaper changes are a masterclass in selfless love.
None of these feel like lightning bolts in the moment. They feel like Tuesdays.
But string enough Tuesdays together, and one day you look up and realize you’ve built something that feels an awful lot like a calling—only now you know the true secret:
You didn’t find your purpose.
You forged it, with whatever was already in your hands.
The raw material is waiting.
The only question is whether you’ll keep searching the horizon for a sign,
or start shaping what’s right here into something that matters.
Your move.