Purpose
How to find my purpose in life?
Purpose is found by doing: notice what moves you and which pain of others you understand, then test it small. It isn't a revelation; it's a direction.
bairogonzalez.com team, drawing on Bairo's story · Published
The question "what is my purpose?" usually comes up when something falls apart. The job ended, the business closed, life lost its script. It's a big question, and it deserves practical answers, not catchphrases.
What to do now
- Look at what you already do without being asked. What subject do you study on your own? Which of other people's problems do you solve without charging? There is usually a clue there.
- Look at the pain you know. Many people find purpose precisely in the pain they went through: someone who went hungry fights hunger, someone who was left without documents helps migrants. Your scar may be your map.
- Bring three circles together. What you like to do, what you're good at and what someone needs. Where all three meet, there's a good candidate for purpose. If you can make a living from it, even better; if not yet, start on the side.
- Test it small. Volunteering, a weekend project, a course, a conversation with someone who works in that field. Purpose is confirmed in practice, not in theory.
- Accept that it changes shape. Purpose is not a job title; it's a direction. It can show up as a salon, then as a course, then as a company, always pointing to the same place.
- Take care of your livelihood while you search. Purpose doesn't pay the rent in the first month. Keep an income and build the new direction little by little.
- Don't let the search turn into anguish. If the feeling of emptiness is deep and constant, it may be more than existential doubt. Talk to someone; CVV answers at 188.
When it happened to Bairo
Bairo Leandro Gonzalez Martinez says there are no coincidences and no accidents. There are purpose, dreams and execution. The sentence explains the Colombian boy who announced, before any road existed, that one day he would live in Brazil, and who got here across the bridge of capoeira.
His purpose changed shape many times. It was a salon, a hair-treatment course, a cosmetics brand, events. After going broke with many people depending on him, he began aiming at something he hadn't done before: building infrastructure for those left outside the system, such as the producers and traders at the wholesale food markets.
Today, the thread he sees in everything is human life: lifetime as a measure, the idea that every person can seek their best self, and a humanitarian front, Instituto CEASA, with the proposal of widening access to food.
The path
Purpose isn't something that falls from the sky ready-made; it's a direction you recognize by looking back and confirm by walking forward. In Bairo's life, every attempt pointed to the same place, even when it seemed like a detour. Start with what moves you and with what hurts in you. Carry it out small. Purpose usually shows up along the way.
Perhaps the most useful question isn't "what is my purpose?" but "whom do I want to serve?". Purpose tends to appear when life stops revolving only around ourselves. A person, a community, a problem you can no longer bear to see unsolved. When you find that someone or that problem, the rest of the answer starts to fall into place.