Soul Searching

In my quest to figure out life, I've discovered something that has proven to be very thought provoking. It's a video from TED of Rick Warren, who was the pastor that gave the invocation at my friend's (I wish) inauguration. There was some controversy around him and his views which made me hesitant to watch the video, but I'm glad I did. While I don't agree with his main belief, that being the existence of God, his video really got to the heart of my understanding of what it is we're supposed to do with our lives.

It's unfortunate that the debate of life's meaning tends to have a religious connotation, resulting in a lack of discussion among people. As Rick Warren points out, this is not a religious question, but rather, a human question. Here are the other things that I like about what he said:

• There's more to life than work, TV, sleep, work, TV, sleep...
• The environment does not belong to us and we are responsible for taking care of it.
• What we believe dictates our behavior which dictates who we become.
• It is imperative for us to break our materialistic ways to realize that life is not about what we have. This is accomplished by giving away our material possessions (money).
  
• We should use "what's in our hands" (career, income, and influence) to make the world a better place.
  

While all of those points are important to me, the last one strikes me the most. He points out that I've been given talent, education, and ideas that have made me the person I am today. I'm wired to do information security, because for some reason that's where my life has taken me. I should use my career, income, and influence to make the world a better place. It's not about me, it's about the world. It really doesn't matter what I do as a career, all that matters is how I make a difference in the world with what I have.

Yeah, this is all deep, I know. It's also important to me and I'm proud to be able to confidently say that these are things I believe in. I have made a lot of progress over the past year, and I hope that this will help someone else to consider these human questions. At some point I'll blog about security, but for right now I'm trying to figure out how my passion fits into my life's purpose. I figure that would be a good thing to know.