THERE IS A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PURPOSE AND DESTINY

pur·pose   [/noun

1.the reason for which something exists or is done, made, used, etc.

2.an intended or desired result; end; aim; goal.

des·ti·ny  / Pronunciation Key–noun

1.something that is to happen or has happened to a particular person or thing; lot or fortune.

2.the predetermined, usually inevitable or irresistible, course of events.

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)

Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.

At different points in our lives, we all become curious about what our futures hold.  We wonder who we will be, where we will go, and what we will do in the future.  Will we make a difference to the world?  Will we be remembered?  Will we be missed once we’re gone?  But what we want to know most usually is related to our fate.  Is there something that we are meant to do?  If so, how can we know what it is?  And is that future a thing that is immutable and set in stone?  Or can we control it– or even change it – by our actions in the present?

PURPOSE VERSUS DESTINY

People often fail to recognize the difference between purpose and destiny.  They use the term “destiny” when they should be using “purpose”, or vice-versa.  Or they use the two terms interchangeably, as if they were identical or equivalent concepts.  But the two concepts are different, though they are related.

Let’s take a minute to examine some of the more important aspects of the relationship between these two concepts.

Destiny should drive purpose, while purpose drives action. 

Purpose provides short-term focus, while destiny provides long-term perspective and direction.

Purpose-Destiny mismatches are possible. 

WHAT DIES IT ALL MEAN (From A Personal Perspective)?

An action must have purpose.  A lack of purpose can result in our wasting time and energy doing things inefficiently, or incorrectly, or both.  There should be a reason (an intent) for every action that we take.  Every action should have an expected outcome—a desired end state that we are trying to achieve. 

A life must have purpose.  A life without purpose is a series of pointless, disconnected actions.  The person without purpose wanders aimlessly from one disappointment to another disappointment because he has no standards to guide him towards success. 

Human destiny comes in two “flavors”.  The first is what I will call “true destiny”, which is that destiny that a person is meant to achieve—what he is meant to do or be.  The second is what I call “consequential destiny”, which is the destiny that a person is relegated to, based on a lack of purpose, lack of action, or lack of vision.  Many refer to consequential destiny by using the term “fate”. 

True destiny doesn’t just happen, it must be sought.  Achieving one’s true destiny requires action.  Though destiny does not depend on what one thinks or does, achieving ones destiny is very much dependent on these things.  Achieving destiny must become the guiding purpose of all other purposes.  In this way, every individual success and achievement becomes a step on the journey towards destiny.

While it is possible to achieve purpose without achieving destiny, it is impossible to achieve destiny without purpose.  This means that it is possible to be working hard towards achieving personal goals and objectives that do not contribute to, and can even be in direct conflict with, your destiny.  As a result, you can go through life achieving things that provide some transitory level of satisfaction and in the end come to realize that nothing that you have achieved truly makes you happy or satisfied. 

When purpose and destiny are at odds with each other, it is destiny that should take precedence.  You should never ransom your tomorrows for today.  History usually remembers where we end up, not how we got there.  This does not mean that a good end justifies any means employed to achieve it, but it does mean that when there is more than one way to achieve a particular purpose, then you should choose the one that contributes most to achieving your destiny.  You may, at times, have to forego possible immediate gains or pleasure, but the future rewards of focusing on destiny more than outweigh any short term negative consequences.

 

And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.(Romans 8:28 (KJV))

Knowledge Versus Wisdom

The average adult believes that the level of human knowledge has increased many times over, just within the last hundred years or so.  We think that the human race is much smarter today than it has ever been – we know more information about more things than we have ever known.  This is what we believe, but is it true?  We probably can prove that we, as a race, have accumulated more facts than the ancients were able to discover.   And we can say with some level of confidence that due to easy access to books and magazines, electronic information transmission media such as television, and especially the internet, any one modern individual has at his or her fingertips more raw information than anyone would have thought possible prior to this modern age.

Yet important questions remain.  Are we really smarter today than we’ve ever been?  What is “smart”, anyway, and how does it relate to knowledge?  Are they the same thing?  And what about “intelligence” – how is it associated?  And where does “wisdom” fit in?

 Knowledge, intelligence and wisdom.  In common usage these three terms often are used interchangeably.  Though they are clearly related, they are different.  Knowledge is about how much you know – about the accumulation of individual facts.  Intelligence is about how much you can know – about your capacity to acquire and store new facts.  Wisdom, on the other hand, is about how you apply what you know – about the utilization, application, and extension of what you know in new ways and to new situations.  Put another way, knowledge and intelligence are quantitative concepts.  If you were to think of your brain as a child’s sand pail, and facts as the grains of sand, then intelligence could be thought of as the size of the pail and knowledge as the amount of sand that is in it.  Conversely, wisdom is qualitative.  Using the previous analogy, it (wisdom) would equate to your skill in using the sand in the bucket to, for instance, fill sandbags, build sand castles, or make glass.  This skill is independent of the size of the bucket or the amount of sand in it, just as wisdom is independent of the type or amount of knowledge that one possesses.

What potential pitfalls might result from a failure to understand or appreciate the difference between these three concepts? 

 If we confuse intelligence with knowledge, then we confuse potential with possession.  This can lead to the mistaken belief that the mere capability to get knowledge is as important as the actual getting.  And this, in turn, can lead us to minimize the value that is ascribed to those who have, or are perceived to have, less potential to learn, in spite of any evidence to the contrary.  Such beliefs have been used in the past to deny education to Black slaves and other minority groups, to justify providing sub-standard educations to newly freed Blacks, to institutionalize the physically handicapped, and to limit the mentally handicapped to “special education” programs geared to their limited abilities.  This type of confusion also can lead us to accept educational institutions that don’t educate, teachers who don’t teach, and students who don’t learn.  We become satisfied with providing the potential to learn, and forget about presenting a real education.  This happens when we expend great effort and spend massive amounts of money to guarantee that every child has access to free public education, but do little or nothing to guarantee the quality of that education.

If we confuse intelligence with wisdom, then we confuse the capacity to get information with the capacity to use information.  A potential consequence of this is that we may believe wrongly that someone who performs well in training or an educational environment should perform as well in real-life situations.  Conversely, we can assume that someone who does poorly in school will do poorly in life.  Yet seldom is the capacity to absorb individual facts directly related to the ability to use those facts.  The ability to memorize hundreds of recipes does not make one a gourmet chef.  The ability to memorize the components and operating parameters of an internal combustion engine also does not make one an expert driver.  And the fact that Albert Einstein was a poor student whose math teacher said he would never amount to anything did not prevent him from becoming one of the most influential physicists of all time.

If we confuse knowledge with wisdom, then we confuse facts with ability.  This can lead to the mistaken belief that someone who has gathered information on a subject automatically knows how to apply that information.  If this were true, then reading a book about economics would be enough to make one an expert economist.  This is clearly absurd.  Yet we can still find ourselves assuming that someone who has taken a course or undergone training should be, if not an expert, then at least a skillful practitioner of the discipline addressed by the course or training.  A related false assumption is that greater education automatically translates to greater skill—someone at the doctoral level is assumed to be more skillful than someone with only a bachelor’s level education.

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