It was not an easy decision to take 10 days off my busy schedule and travel to the other side of the planet to be with my sister for one of her milestone birthdays. It was not easy because I had to allocate time to respond to time demanded by my clients and team.

However, I made the decision, went through many challenges getting the visa because my busy travel schedule provided me only a small window to obtain the visa, worked long hours to clear as much work as possible so that I can be with the families of my sister and brothers during this time.

I am so glad that I made this decision to see the joy in my sisters face when I arrived at her door at 7am a few days ago, with my brother who picked me up from the Toronto Airport. I am so glad that I can spend time with the families of my brother and sister, catching up on their lives, sharing nostalgic moments, visiting interesting places, and spending quality time together.

This experience provided me another opportunity to reflect on the notion of purpose. The question this time is; what is the purpose of family?

While most of us tend to give a lot of priority to work and earnings and do not give adequate time to family, this experience further affirmed the importance of family. On one hand, family is our root; it connects us to our heritage and values. Separating from family is tantamount to separating from our roots.

We work and earn to give a good life to our family. Does money alone ensure a good life for our family? I could have easily sent some money as a birthday gift to my sister. But can that replace the joy of her seeing me and us spending quality time together? Therefore, while earnings are important, I would consider quality time with family is even more important.

Our family is our oxygen. The love from our family energizes us. Therefore, being with family provides us the recharge and the energy to go back to work with renewed vigour to do purposeful work for our world and to provide for family.

The lesson I take from this is that it is not only that our purpose is to provide a good life to family, the purpose of family is to help us provide good life to them. It is a cyclical process, tuned to the process of life.

So, let’s give this gift of love to ourselves and family, during special occasions, by spending quality time with our family. This helps us to receive the energy from our oxygen, the family, to live a purposeful life.

My blog posts of the last ten months addressed the impact of violence, religion, politics, sports, professions, stress, releasing, the subconscious and love on the lives of people and how to respond from the frame of purposefulness. We continue to explore purposefulness, this time in relation to family.

I hope this short blog post inspires you to find ways of making sense and dealing with experiences and struggles you encounter trying to live purposefully.

I wish you purposeful living!