Our purpose may pursue us through the quantum wavefunction
How to stop running and embrace purpose and joy
How to stop running and embrace purpose and joy
While on a recent flight to Seattle enroute to Alaska, I caught the Oscar winning film from Pixar, Soul. Soul is about life’s purpose, or lack thereof, seen through the eyes of a frustrated jazz pianist struggling and sacrificing his whole life to “make it” as a band musician. The tone and attitude of the movie was, for me, refreshing because its take on life, purpose, and struggle was both forgiving and also critical of the purpose narrative.
The purpose narrative is simply put that each of us has a purpose, a reason for being on this Earth, and our goal is to find it and pursue it relentlessly. The prize for such a pursuit is presumably happiness.
In America, famous scientists and entrepreneurs (many of whom I’m convinced are workaholics) tout finding meaning and happiness in work. It is all about passion. Self-styled life gurus sell this message in self-help books that simultaneously encourage us to strike out on our own and live our fullest life and belittle us for being satisfied with a stable but unglamorous lifestyle.
Soul takes a different approach in that it suggests that purpose is an illusion or at least misunderstood and that, while pursuit of life goals and values is admirable, it is not worth sacrificing all that makes up the rest of life in order to achieve.
Part of the trouble with the purpose narrative is that it makes erroneous assumptions about how life works, in particular, how much control we have over life. It at once suggests that we have a given purpose, one that is conferred by an external force, and also that we are responsible for pursuing it.
The purpose narrative says that, if we let up our effort or make the wrong choices, purpose will pass us by. Thus, this narrative assumes that we have both choice and no choice. We have the freedom not to pursue our purpose, i.e., the freedom to do otherwise, but the consequences of doing so are dire, and we must exhaust ourselves making sure that we achieve that purpose. This is the narrative that the main character, Joe Gardner, of Soul initially believes.
A Christian narrative is buried in this idea. Traditional Christian theology suggests that we have a choice on whether to follow Christ, but our purpose is to follow. Moreover, following requires making the right choices and great personal effort.
John Calvin threw a wrench into this idea when he suggested that, au contraire, we have no choice at all in the matter. Calvin said that only some persons’ purpose is to follow Christ and be saved. Others’ purpose is to be damned. Moreover, we are passive observers to the unfolding of our spiritual lives in one of these two directions (double predestination).
Some reformed Christians believe that we have a further choice even after our “election”. I.e., salvation is still ours to lose. You see this theology in the classic 17th century allegory Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan.
Beyond this traditional Christian narrative (mostly conceived in the 16-17th century), these ideas can be applied to the purpose narrative in general. Either we are compelled to follow a purpose or we have none, would be the Calvinist take. If your life seems meaningless, it is because it is, but not everyone’s life is like yours, some really have a purpose. Their advice to find your passion and follow it, while well-meaning, is misguided. You won’t find it. Rather you need to watch for signs that you have been chosen. I.e., wait for your purpose to find you and if it doesn’t then you never had one.
If you do see signs of a purpose, hold on to it in case you fail to remain true and lose it, Bunyan would add.
The third option here is the pluralist one. This idea is that we are compelled to define our purpose rather than find it. I.e., there are many paths to God. Many articles on the science of purpose suggest that indeed people don’t find passion and pursue it, rather they find something to do, and, as they become more and more successful at that thing, they develop a passion for it. Thus it seems like there are many paths to purpose.
Yet I am not convinced that the science is being correctly interpreted because such popular takes assume that passion or purpose only exists when people are consciously aware of it, i.e., people have a good understanding of their purpose if they have it and not merely after they have achieved a level of maturity such that they are able to acknowledge it. Likewise many people are not passionate about the things that make them successful.
A final and fourth option is what I call the Hound of Purpose option in which we have a purpose that actively pursues us, like a hunting dog. (This is a paraphrase of the title of a 1893 poem by Francis Thompson, The Hound of Heaven, about Christ’s relentless pursuit of him.) In this narrative, we have a choice, but the real effort comes from avoiding purpose not pursuing it. We don’t chase after purpose. It is the other way around. Thus, people who avoid their purpose must do so at great cost. Purpose is built in to our lives and who we are.
Our fears of failing to attain or accidentally losing our purpose, then, are misguided, and perhaps if we fail to attain the purpose we think is ours, it is not because of our failure but because we had another purpose altogether. All we have to do is stop running and see.
I think that the creators of Soul managed to express this deeper message without turning the film into a lesson in philosophy, which is what really impressed me. It expresses an approach to life that, in the relentless drive to find meaning in our complex, ever shifting society we often overlook.
We often conceive our of purpose as being a single activity or pursuit: art, music, science, engineering, medicine, and so on, accompanied by fame and fortune. Yet what pursues us is not that one thing, though that thing may be bound up in it, rather it is the whole of life that pursues us and compels us to submit to its glory.
Quantum physics can help us to unravel this mystery because, buried in its complex equations, is the key to understanding how life unfolds. Quantum theory tells us that reality is expressed in a function called a wavefunction which describes not only what exists based on our experience but all things that could exist at that moment. That which we have not observed or measured, exists within the wavefunction even if it contradicts other observations. The cat is dead and alive at once.
Interpretations of this function abound. Some believe that all these observations exist simultaneously until we observe. Some believe that they exist simultaneously even after we observe but the contradictory worlds are somehow walled off from one another, with different copies of us observing different outcomes of quantum experiments. Others believe that all the realities are bound up in the wavefunction but for some reason only one is observable, while others are suppressed.
The interpretation of the meaning of the wavefunction is not important here. What matters is how the evolution of the wavefunction over time determines our power to choose, to do otherwise, and what that power to choose means for purpose.
Because the wavefunction can evolve to several potential outcomes at different moments, our own personal wavefunction reflects the span of possible outcomes of our choices. Thus, it is a reflection of who we are. In a moral dilemma, will I make the right choice 40% , 60%, or 100% of potential outcomes? If it is 40%, and I happen to observe that I did the right thing, it may be a fluke, an accident, and I am still, overall, not a moral person on balance. Likewise just because I did the wrong thing doesn’t mean I’m a bad person. Nevertheless, there is such a thing as good and bad people.
Going from morality to purpose, likewise, just because something happened in my life that appears purposeful, does not mean that that is my life’s purpose. It could just be a fluke. Maybe I felt like I was an accomplished musician as a child, only to find out as an adult that it was pressure from parents and teachers that, when removed, caused me to move on to other things. Then again, maybe that pressure was part of my purpose. It is hard to tell.
The key distinguishing factor is that our purpose must be relentless, dominating the outcomes of our wavefunctions. It is not up to us to pursue some small chance. Rather, it is the opposite. It is up to us to embrace what life is telling us and let go of notions that others have projected onto us from their own sense of purposes.
Trash the self-help books and look inside, so to speak.
As I said, we also have the power to do otherwise, so likely our purpose does not dominate 100% of our wavefunction. Rather, it dominates some majority of it. That majority includes the outcomes where we chose to stop fighting and submit. Practically speaking, at some point, we will either become exhausted from fighting or die. Thus, those outcomes that fail to achieve our purpose are probably shorter ones.
Because the wavefunction is a complex object describing the whole of life, it is also not reducible to a single kind of activity. Rather, it is commonalities across the wavefunction’s outcomes that indicate the hound. Thus, it is not always possible to say with certainty what one’s purpose is, even towards the end of life. Yet, life knows.
The one sign, however, that one is submitting to one’s purpose is undoubtedly joy and a sense of awe and gratitude, perhaps an experience of a flow state from time to time. It is also, as Carl Sagan would say, a sense of the numinous. That does not mean that pursuing one’s purpose will give you constant joy. Human life is too complex for such constancy. Nor will it sweep away all mental health problems, though it may be a lifeline in the midst of emotional chaos. Yet, it is a sense of safety and release, provided you understand what it is that has got hold of you, not a monster but a mother, not a prison but a vast land to explore.
I FLED Him, down the nights and down the days; I fled Him, down the arches of the years; I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears I hid from Him, and under running laughter. Up vistaed hopes I sped; And shot, precipitated, Adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd fears, From those strong Feet that followed, followed after. But with unhurrying chase, And unperturbèd pace, Deliberate speed, majestic instancy, They beat — and a Voice beat More instant than the Feet — ‘All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.’ …
The Hound of Heaven By Francis Thompson (1859–1907), Nicholson & Lee, eds. The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse. 1917.