Soul Purpose

​“Frederick?” she replied. “Yeah, he just left now. He left this.”

The secretary handed the manager an envelope that contained Freddy’s letter of resignation. It was curt, but polite. The boss, however, found it curious that after all this time working at the company that Freddy would leave. He was always under the impression that Freddy enjoyed his work. From the letter, it said something entirely different.

​“Hey, Patrick. I know this seems like something you would have never expected of me. I have given the Colson’s so many years and gladly. If I am to be honest, not one of those years have I felt that the job belonged to me. I felt it belonged to someone else. Maybe they aren’t as good as I was, but the work was a better fit for them than it was for me. I leave all documents contained within the envelope needed for my resignation and wish Colson’s all the best in the future.”

Freddy had left the office two hours before Patrick noticed he was missing. The car he usually took to work was left at home, Freddy deciding it was better to walk home after his resignation than to drive. It was a long walk, but a necessary one. He even chose unnecessary routes to lengthen his time walking. On this walk he began to remember who he was and not who he had become.

Over the years, since he had the consciousness of empathy and understood even the slightest social convention, he had began the biggest act of his life. Living a lie that he himself to believe was truth from the very beginning. As a person and like most people, Freddy had developed a character. A character that was not his own, but was instead the character his friends and family expected. To go even deeper than that, he thought this character was himself truly, what he expected of himself as well.

As it turned out, one evening, he was pondering his thoughts and feelings while reading a book about a character in a fictional world. The character was a spy, a man of facade, an infiltrator and deceiver. The man Freddy believed to be the mild mannered Colson employee was not him. It was a fabrication brought on by circumstance, because at not point in his early life had he ever considered this was where he would be.

Freddy was no fool, but certainly was a dreamer. He never believed he would be a superhero or rockstar, but never in his worst nightmare did he believe he would become someone else. By the time he returned home he had established some core likes and dislikes that he smothered in social convention. He discovered that abandoned passion and began working at it. He did not begin his work with money in mind, like he did when he worked for Colson’s. If at any point in his passion did he realize he was working towards money and not continuing that passion he would abandon it once more. For if he was doing to make money there would be no difference between his passion and his position at Colson’s.

Soul purpose; when those words crossed Freddy’s mind he didn’t think much of them. It was a phrase often used to describe a human’s general passion. Perhaps what he was working on was his soul purpose, but before he could label it as such he had to make sure what the label meant in his mind. So often we put labels on things without thinking much of them, but in truth that label may hold meaning that we disagree with. Freddy has labeled friends as such, but there too many times where a ‘friend’ did not live up to the label.

Soul purpose, to Freddy, was bound by fate or destiny or whatever cosmic force decided his future. Personally, he never liked the idea that his future was decided, but that was because he was never a fan of control. However, once he established that there was never a point in his life where he had control over his destiny he took control for the first time.

None of these personal revelations hit him on that day, but in the days to come they developed in his mind like blossoming flowers. It was then that Freddy understood himself as well as the phrase ‘soul purpose’.

There was no such thing as a soul purpose. Like anything natural in this world, developed since the beginning of time, his soul underwent changes. Shifts and movements as random and predictable as the waves in an ocean. Only then did he realize his ‘soul purpose’ was to let his soul shift and go with it in order relieve himself of internal conflict. To swim with the current, not against it. There was a reason his soul chose a direction and only by going with it could he understand why and feel better about himself in doing so.

Right now, his soul had hit the rapids and flowed into the ocean of personal discovery. Freddy was lost, clueless and, in a sense, useless. However, he knew it would not always be that way. As time passed there were ripples that peaked his interest and became waves later on. Freddy created, he destroyed, he survived, he thrived, he crawled, he ran, he cheered, he cried, he lived, he died.

Freddy was one of the few people in the world that pursued something irrespective of others. The ones who accepted that wore no label of friendship, but a badge. The partner he kept did not wear a veil of love, but a ring. There was a closeness in his life that he never thought he would achieve, a closeness he never thought existed, a life he never thought could be lived. Freddy passed these lessons on to his children with difficulty, but not through lecture or adjustment. He taught by example and the eyes of all around him learnt from it. The people would not learn if he told them, only if they wanted to. To Freddy, this did not matter, but it was everything.