Don’t (Just) Be Happy. Be Useful.

“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful.” - Ralph Emerson

“We all need to feel significant,” says Beverly Taylor. “How do we feel significant? We bring some benefit to somebody else.”

Beverly is an acupressurist. It’s like an acupuncturist, except that instead of needles, Beverly uses her hands to unblock and re-stimulate electrical flow in our bodies (if you’re curious to learn more about it, I made a short movie about it here).

Beverly discovered acupressure as a “wild young thing,” as she puts it. She was part of the Tipi Trio, aimed at wilderness self-reliance. They collected firewood using a swede-saw. After all that hacking and sawing, she developed medial epicondylitis, an inflammatory elbow condition. She visited a physician, who recommended surgery. “But it was the middle of winter,” Beverly said. “And without the use of my arm, I’d freeze to death.”

So she went to a bookstore and found a book on Chinese medicine. The book said to press here, press here, press here. After two days of this, her arm was out of the sling and after two weeks it was completely healed.

She’s been practicing acupressure ever since.

Beverly holds her sessions within the guesthouse she owns in Yelapa, Mexico, called Casa Isabel. If Yelapa is a paradise, then Casa Isabel is the gem. The guesthouse is built into the jungle, along a mountainside. Each room faces the ocean and receives a magical rejuvenating breeze. Her acupressure table is set up on a rock ledge that overlooks a small waterfall. As you receive treatment, you hear the birds, the rushing water, the trees rustling in the wind. The experience would be absolutely divine if Beverly were not pulverizing you with her hands of steel (that’s not to say her sessions aren’t pleasant; “pain with purpose,” as she’s called it, and I would agree).

Beverly moved to Yelapa 22 years ago with her partner Chris. She soon met Isabel, who owned this beautiful guesthouse on the beach. They got to know each other very well. Isabel was getting up there in age and told Beverly one morning, ‘When I go, I want you and Chris to take over.’ “I don’t know why she’d say such a thing,” Beverly said. “I had no interest in taking over, nor did I want her to leave.”

A few days later, Isabel took a fatal flaw while visiting Puerto Vallarta. Beverly has been the guesthouse owner ever since.

Acupressure sessions with Beverly go beyond the physical. For many, it’s our emotional issues that create blockages in the body. What’s funny is that, as Beverly starts kneading certain points, I feel words bubble up – as if my muscles were storing certain thoughts and memories. She pressed into my upper calf and I started talking about a wound from a past relationship. She dug into my belly button and up came fears about my career. With many of these, Beverly gives much-needed advice and we work through it. So in this, sessions double not just as acupressure, but as a form of therapy as well.

I asked Beverly what she loves most about this work (by the way, Beverly not only does acupressure; she and Chris are also builders, and they rebuilt every room of the guesthouse when they took over). “[Acupressure] helps me feel significant,” she said. “I see people’s smiles and the way they look when they get off the table. That feels great to see.”

“We all need to feel significant,” she continued. “And what happens if we don’t? We’ve got this lousy self-esteem. We’re beating ourselves up all the time. We’re telling ourselves nasty things about ourselves.

Anybody who does anything useful that they love is going to feel significant.”

I’d met another woman recently who operates a school. She’s worked with many teenagers. She said that most of them are on their phones all day because they don’t feel useful. So they turn to their phones as a way to distract themselves, or in an effort to be seen by others. This immediately resonated with me, and I felt this to be true of many adults as well.

My question, then, is how do we find the thing that helps us feel useful?

“Look around. There are millions of needs,” Beverly said. “Which one would it satisfy you to serve?”

Spiritual author Marianne Williamson said one of the greatest pleasures is to be used for the universe’s bidding. To discover that use, she’s offered this prayer:

“Please, use me. Where would you have me go? What would you have me do? What would you have me say, and to whom?”

And the most beautiful thing about it is, when we discover a need that we’re interested in fulfilling, it feels really good to do it. It’s like this cyclical system that builds on itself.

I experienced this recently. I was with a friend not too long ago. We had a lovely day together, and then we got home and a dark mood came over him. This wasn’t new for him, but rather something he carried for a very long time and finally felt ready to reveal. We talked for a few hours about it, and it ran pretty deep. I saw my words landed with him. He was listening. The wheels were turning. We were connected.

He apologized profusely for taking up my time and unloading his problems onto me. I could see and hear his guilt. I did my best to communicate what was inside me — that I’d felt the best I have all weekend, maybe in weeks…I felt he needed me, and withn that moment, I had the right words to perhaps nudge him forward.

Usefulness isn’t just a nice thing to have — it’s also imperative for our health. In Chinese medicine, disease comes from stagnation. Hence, we need to find something that literally “lights us up” - an activity that sends energy and excitement throughout the body. And if you don’t have that activity, and Marianne Williamson’s serenity prayer isn’t working, Beverly has offered a more immediate solution.

“If you need something to do, why don’t you sit around and rub someone’s feet?” she said (and she means this unsardonically). “I mean, how great do you feel after someone’s rubbed your feet? And it doesn’t cost a penny.”

“I would love to see a culture of people rubbing each other’s feet all the time!” She continued. “How good would you feel then? Instead of sitting around and talking idly or putting drugs into your body, you rub each others’ feet! You’re doing it at the same time, it’s an exchange, and you feel really great. Plus, the feet are so reflexive. You rub someone’s feet and you can make their whole body feel great.”

What I love most about this is it reframes the conversation on purpose. Many of us, Millennials especially, drive ourselves nuts trying to figure out our purpose. We hope it will be ordained by the Creator Himself, or delivered as a letter in the mail, or revealed like the winner of the Oscars.

Thank you to cartoon Mark Wahlberg for presenting me with this award.

But with Beverly’s advice, the opposite happens. We discover purpose by satisfying a need for others, in a way that we enjoy doing.

The search for purpose can be fruitless in itself. Why? Because it’s self-serving. I understand the desire for purpose; it’s nice to know why you’re here, and that your existence matters. But to search for purpose seems like it’s more for your needs, and not for others, which contradicts the whole meaning of purpose, in that it’s rooted in service. The search then is doomed from the start.

So instead of purpose, I like to reframe it as “usefulness” (similar to the Emerson quote at the start of the article). And the guiding question becomes not, “What’s my purpose?” but rather, “Where can I be useful?” From that, miraculously, purpose emerges.

And if that answer does not immediately become apparent, fret not. There’s likely a pair of feet nearby that could use a good rubbing.