Underscore the word appropriate. I’m not asking you to do stupid things. Quite the contrary. When we examine our motives and the direction of our lives, we discover that they often seem to be drifting off course. Sometimes we need to make some changes that seem risky. But what real achievement is accomplished in the easy chair?

The acclaimed author of Roots, Alex Haley, once said about taking risks, “Nothing is more important. Too often we are taught how not to take risks. When we are children in school, for example, we are told to respect our heroes, our founders, the great people of the past. We are directed to their portraits hanging on walls and in hallways and reproduced in textbooks. What we are not told is that these leaders, who look so serene and secure in those portraits, were in fact rule-breakers. They were risk-takers in the best sense of the word; they dared to be different.”3 

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That’s it — dare to be different. Determine where you want to go and start. The path will have dangers and you will have to take appropriate risks. But the alternative is to stay where you are now. Is that where you want to be?

I have a friend who is ninety years young. Her name is Frankie. She is alive and alert because she lives each day with purpose. She has volunteered at the local hospital for 20 years. Frankie recently left an established church to help start a new congregation. Because she lives fully in the present for the sake of the future, she came to our house and got some cuttings off various vegetation to plant in her yard. Frankie has had plenty of setbacks in life but she has faced each one bravely. She has taken appropriate risks all her life and in now looking forward to reaching the century mark.

3. To Live On Purpose Means Being Open To Serendipity.

To live on purpose does not mean to barrel headlong through life so intensely that you actually miss life while trying to live. Some of life’s greatest moments come as serendipity — surprises that are happy opportunities that seem to signal, “Hey, wake up. Pay attention. Be in the moment.” Someone has wisely observed, “Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take but by the places and moments that take our breath away.”

In the 1970’s Bill Bowerman, the University of Oregon track coach, was searching for a design for a new type of track shoe for his star runners. One morning his wife served him a plate of waffles. Suddenly, he envisioned a slab of rubber pressed down over a waffle iron. That idea became the initial spark for a company to be called Nike. At their superstore/museum in Chicago, you can still see Mrs. Bowerman’s rubberized waffle iron.

You never know what might cross your path when you are truly alive and awake. Our son Ryan volunteers at a crisis center in his college town. He started there as part of an academic requirement but has stayed on because helping people has given him a great sense of purpose. His eyes sparkle when he speaks of talking someone out of suicide. When we know what we are after in life, we find that opportunities open all around us. Someone said of John D. Rockefeller, “When it was raining money, John knew how to turn his cup up the right way.”