The Purpose Driven Life: The prequel

By no means am I religious. I’ve only been to a church in the last twenty years for a wedding or funeral. I only bought the book, “The purpose driven life” because a good drinking and drugging friend of mine suddenly decided one day to find Jesus. I’d known Myron since our freshman year in college. We spent the next ten years of our life cruising bars, clubs, bathhouses, drug dealers houses and etc. He was a great club friend, the type that would tie the rubber band around your arm to find a vein and shoot you up with the latest drug. One day he decided to get sober, which I thought meant he was just going to let the hard stuff go, but he meant actually sobriety, not even valium. Because we were friends for so long, I decided to entertain what I considered his latest phase like when he fell in love with ecstasy and xanyx.

I bought the book so that we could have something in common. I grew up on the bible so talking about God was nothing new to me. I was actually intrigued. I never considered Myron one-dimensional because I always enjoyed his intellect and humor, so I was excited to see where the new adventure would take us. But Myron wasn’t having it. He decided he was conservative Christian despite the fact he was gay. I knew underneath he was just trying to protect himself and his new decisions. Actually, my interest was only to discourage what I considered his newest annoyance. I wanted the old Myron back. I wanted the “fuck up” that made my life seem somewhat normal. We stopped speaking. Ten years of friendship gave us too many issues. That’s the thing about some friendships—the longer the relationship the more shit to be rehashed. “Remember when you did this, and I did that” bullcrap.

It very hard to forgive people you’ve known your entire life.

A year and something after I stopped speaking to Myron, I re-discovered “The purpose driven life;” mostly because I hate having books in my library that I haven’t read. I hate going to those people houses and they have books on their shelves and when you ask them about them, they haven’t read them. I refuse to buy books I don’t read. Every book on my shelf I’ve read from cover to cover and if I like it, it goes in my reference collection to be quoted and re-read.

Anyways, beginning the “purpose driven life” beget a question I hadn’t considered seriously in a long time. I had to ask myself, did I actually believe in God. I knew I didn’t believe in my childhood God, or heaven or hell. I got over that the first time I sucked dick. I had to ask myself did I believe in God which mean life had purpose. I used to be very dark. Very dark where life was just fucking meaningless. I read every existential book. I wore black. I constantly fantasized about my death. I remember making the decision in my head that I was just going to piss my life away. I wasn’t going to do anything with it. I was just going to get high, have sex and fun. That seems romantic when you’re twenty two years old. Turning thirty years old and surviving my twenties gave me a different perspective on life. Just having fun suddenly seemed stupid. Anyways, I had to ask myself if I believe in God. I thought about the big bang theory. I thought about evolution. I thought about Adam and Eve. I thought about the trees and wind and the human body and how it all seemed so specific and planned. I couldn’t ignore the sun rises for a reason. I couldn’t ignore the purpose of bees and ants and even the germs on my body that I can’t see. I couldn’t ignore purpose. That everything on this planet in one form or another has purpose. And if there was a purpose, meant there was an intelligent mind behind it, that someone planned this. That someone decided it. I knew I wasn’t an atheist. I grew up a church boy, there was no way I can ever be an atheist.

Indirectly I believed in God. Which mean indirectly my life had some purpose? That was new. I never even thought of my life having any purpose. Yet intellectually I couldn’t deny the fact I wasn't0 exempt if 99% of life on this planet in some small or big way had purpose. The wind blew despite the fact if I wanted to feel it on my face or not. So if my life had purpose, I needed to figure out what that was.

I knew part of me would have a difficult time digesting some of the crap written about the bible. And I’ve read ever self-help book on the shelves at Borders, so I knew it probably wouldn’t tell me anything I already didn’t know but I was up for the challenge.

The book begins with I must take forty days out of my life and read each chapter and process it slowly and sincerely. I knew I wasn’t going to take forty days to read a book. But I did decide to dedicate individual blogs for each chapter. I call it my purpose driven blog.

Now that I know I believe in God, the first chapter is “It all Starts with God”