“Why aren’t you doing important work?” — Richard Hamming There is a quote by Søren Kierkegaard that goes something like this: life is understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards. I never fully decided to become a researcher, or an academic for that matter. It simply happened. Yet when I look back on what has now been most of my professional life, it is difficult to imagine things unfolding any other way. ...
The quest to find oneself—to find that which moves you, that which makes you you and not anyone else—is, in a way, the shape of one’s true purpose. Often, it is also that which you must keep explaining, because you simply can’t help it. It insists on being. Over the course of an intense and immersive week at that old lighthouse of minds—where history hums through hallways and questions hang heavier than answers—we, as a cohort, but I especially, revisited the thread of purpose. Mine, it turns out, has always been quietly there: to invite others to join the great conversation. ...