“The purpose of life is not to be happy.  It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived, and lived well.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Today I returned to yoga after missing the past two weeks for holidays.  After practice — which was surprisingly fulfilling despite how stiff and weak I felt going in – my teacher read the above quote.  At first I was taken aback by the idea that life’s purpose was not happiness, but rather usefulness.  I’d never heard the quote before and thought how much about Emerson I did not know.

But once the quote was completed, I was struck by the power of its message.  And then I pondered on the idea that if one found a great purpose in life, and pursued that purpose with honor, integrity and passion — an immediate by-product of that must inevitably be happiness.  So wouldn’t it of course be more fulfilling to all of us to have reason and purpose first and just have faith and trust that pursuing that purpose would not only “make some difference that you have lived” but bring happiness and the contentment that you have “lived well.”