Make Your People Your Purpose

What dogs seem to know about the circle of life, and why it takes human beings two midlife crises to figure it out.

Our dog Cole sits in the window—as he has for most of his 70-ish human years—staring at a squirrel and shaking with adrenaline, blood-thirsty lust, and frustration.

“What an excruciating life,” I remark to my sixteen-year-old son Quinn, “to sit there, feeling separated from your life’s purpose by an invisible pane of glass, powerless to reach it.”

Quinn knows I’m referring to Cole’s passion for murdering small woodland animals.

“Yeah,” he says, “and when someone does finally open the door to let you chase your dreams, your dream climbs a tree, taunts you, and tosses acorns at you.”

Cole has caught a rabbit here and there—and chipmunks aplenty—but he’s never gotten himself a squirrel.

Quinn calls Cole over, and Cole snuggles into him, contented.

“And yet,” Quinn observes, “he’s totally satisfied with his life.”

“Yeah,” I say, “because he’s on this side of the glass, with his people, and his people are actually his purpose.”

That’s such common knowledge they made a movie about it. What’s not so well known is that it takes human beings two midlife crises to come to the exact same conclusion.

The Circle of Life

A midlife crisis is a messy concoction with lots of ingredients—and it comes out of the oven looking a little different for everyone—but the heat that makes it rise is a reckoning with one’s purpose. Why am I here? What are my dreams? Where can I find my bliss? How am I going to chase it?

Typically, in our first midlife crisis, we realize we’re not doing what we really want to do with our dwindling days. We start prioritizing our passions and begin practicing them more purposefully.

For instance, in my early 30s, I stopped working on Fridays and started writing instead. At first, lengthy journal entries. Then my first blog post. Then, eventually, my first book. And my second. And my first novel. I’d found my purpose. Midlife crisis accomplished, and it had come out of the oven entirely edible.

No one told me about the circle of life and the second midlife crisis, though.

In How to Know a Person, David Brooks discusses the core life tasks identified by development psychologist Erik Erickson. We human beings begin by bonding with our people—in fact, when we’re first born, our eyesight is calibrated so we can only see clearly the face of the person holding us.

Everything else is blurry.

As children, our focus remains on our people, as we compete for attention and try to win praise with small glories. As teenagers, it’s still about our people, though our method changes: we connect by forming cliques and blending in instead of standing out.

Then something changes.

Our people begin to take a backseat to our projects. We use our people as launching pads for our career or vocation—a period of life during which intimacy typically diminishes while ambition increases. Our vision for what we might accomplish expands. Our responsibilities multiply. Enter our first midlife crisis, in which we recalibrate the projects we’re prioritizing.

Eventually, though, during a second midlife crisis, every human being’s expansion mindset reverts to an appreciation mindset.

Brooks points out that, as our days become increasingly numbered, our grand plans give way to more grounded priorities, especially enjoying the ordinary pleasures of everyday life, and deepening connection with the ones we love. Our people become our purpose again. We keep our eyes on them, while our vision for everything else gets blurry once more.

This is the circle of life: we prioritize our people, then our projects, then our people once again.

Something is different after the second midlife crisis, though. It’s no longer about making your people happy so you can be happy. It’s far freer than that. Nor is it about protecting your people and neglecting the rest. It’s far more inclusive than that. And it’s certainly not about settling for what you can get because your projects didn’t pan out.

It’s far more heroic than that.

The Hero’s Journey

The hero’s journey—first articulated by Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces—is a fundamental pattern of growth and meaning that underpins all human experience, and it posits that the hero of any story always arcs through the same trajectory:

They begin in their ordinary world with their people, before crossing the threshold into an extraordinary journey, during which they face great, transformational trials. However, in the final stage of the hero’s journey, they always return to their people with a gift gleaned from their ordeal. Think Frodo returning to the Shire with a warrior’s heart, prepared to defend it from marauders.

In the end, even a hero’s purpose is their people.

A while back, I opened the door to let Cole in the house and he trotted quickly past me, though something didn’t look quite right. From behind, he looked like he had some new, strangely-colored jowls. He continued until he reached the living room rug, lowered his head, and dropped a dead, bloody rabbit in the center of the room.

A gift for his people.

Dogs instinctively understand the plot, no midlife crises required. They want to get out there and chase their dreams and maybe even catch a few, so they can bring the spoils back to the pack.

Who Not What

My second mid-life crisis has shown me that writing isn’t my purpose; it’s my lemonade stand, inviting people to pull off the road for a moment and linger for a little while. It is now clear to me that what I’m doing with my life isn’t as important as who I’m doing it with. My wife. My kids. My friends. My clients. My readers.

When I write, I go on an inner journey, retrieve words from my innermost cave, and return to my people with them. The best gift I can give. And these are the words I want to give you today:

Tremble with anticipation

at the dreams you want to catch

on the other side of the glass,

chase them with all your being,

perhaps even capture a few,

but never forget, in the end,

the people we return to,

are the purpose of it all.

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Does this resonate with you? How so? Does it bother you? Why? I’d love to hear your reactions in the comments. Also, thanks for hitting the heart button below and/or that spinny-circle Restack button if you want this message to spread.