Clues to Purpose: Remembering What We Already Knew
What did you love to do before you had any concept of productivity?
Forget what you are told you are good at, or what makes you money. I’m finding an interesting thread between psychologists and philosophers studying states of freedom: physically, mentally, and spiritually. All point back to one pivotal point in life.
Childhood.
Why We Forget
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi called this state of being flow—the moment of being so absorbed in an activity that time disappears. As kids, we effortlessly lived in this state. Play was purpose enough.
But then, we learned to measure our time. Our talents became skills to be monetized. Our interests were sorted into "practical" or "useless." And in the name of growing up, we abandoned the things that once made us feel most alive.
Nietzsche described this process as the Three Metamorphoses of the Spirit:
First, the spirit is the Camel—weighed down by duty, carrying expectations without question.
Then, the Lion—fighting back, rejecting the roles imposed on us.
Finally, the Child—not childish, but free. Creating for the sake of creation and exploring curiosity without justification.
Most of us (looking directly at myself here) get stuck in the first two. We carry the weight. We push against it. But returning to the state of the child—to genuine, joyful expression—feels harder. We’ve spent years being told it doesn’t matter.
And yet, according to Jean Piaget, the Swiss psychologist who revolutionized how we understand cognitive development, play isn’t just a frivolous childhood pastime—it’s how we construct knowledge. Children don’t just play for fun; they play to make sense of the world. Through play, they learn problem-solving, creativity, and resilience. The irony? As we grow older, we dismiss the very activities that once made us the most engaged and adaptable thinkers.
The Process of Remembering
Carl Jung called it individuation—the journey of reclaiming the parts of ourselves we’ve disowned. The goal isn’t to become someone new. It’s to recover what was left behind.
Erich Fromm, a 20th-century psychoanalyst and social philosopher, argued that modern society conditions us to prioritize having over being. We learn to measure our worth by what we achieve, produce, or own, rather than by how we experience life. The act of reconnecting with childhood joys—activities done for the sheer pleasure of them—can be a small act of resistance against a system that tells us everything must serve a purpose.
Hannah Arendt, the academic love of my life, made a distinction between labor, work, and action. Labor is the effort needed to sustain life, work is what creates lasting structures, but action—action is something else entirely. It is spontaneous, free, and deeply human. It is how we reveal who we truly are. When we engage in something we loved as a child—unburdened by productivity or external validation—perhaps we are engaging in a form of action. A form of remembering.
Childhood as a Roadmap
It’s tempting to think of childhood as something we leave behind or a phase we grow out of. But what if childhood isn’t just a chapter we close but instead a roadmap: a trail leading us back to the things that made us feel alive before the world told us what mattered.
Developmental psychologist Lev Vygotsky proposed the Zone of Proximal Development—the space between what we can do alone and what we can do with support. Children thrive in this space because they are constantly surrounded by play, learning, and guidance that allows them to expand their understanding. What if adulthood, instead of being an endpoint, is simply another version of this?
So Now What?
Purpose isn’t always something new to chase.
I don’t think it’s something new. Maybe it’s just remembering what we already knew.
