Friday nights at the Swift’s is “Family Night,” and since we all love movies and some of the television shows on that night, we often share in that experience.

This past Friday, we decided to watch the pilot of Odyssey 5 on the Sci-Fi Channel. (Yes, we are all Sci-Fi fans as well.) I wasn’t all that taken by the new show until the ‘alien’ was introduced. I was a little disappointed that the alien looked like an old human, but then I guess the budget was limited. What really caught my attention and shocked our whole family was when the marooned earthlings asked the alien for his name.

“In our culture we don’t use names like you do in your culture,” he replied, and I paraphrase. “We identify ourselves by our life purpose.” No kidding! That’s what he said.

Now, we all rolled in the aisles by that unexpected response, but later I got to thinking, what is that were true here? Oh, we might not need to give up our use of proper names, but what if we began to introduce ourselves not by our job or roles, but by our life purposes.

What if, instead of, “Hi, it’s good to meet you. What do you do for a living?” We asked instead, “Hi, it’s good to meet you. What’s your purpose in life?”

And why don’t we do this? Well, I suspect it’s because very few of us would know how to answer the question, and it’s viewed as impolite to ask such a confronting question of someone you’ve just met. And I also suspect if you tried it for a while, those who did answer you would probably still say much the same thing. In other words, they’d be likely to answer that their life purpose was the work they do, or a significant role in their life.

“Oh, I’m a dentist, doctor, mechanic… I guess that’s my life purpose.” Or,

“Oh, I’m busy raising my children, and taking care of my husband. That’s about all the purpose I have time for these days.”

But it’s comforting to know that somewhere out in space there’s another culture of beings who are introducing each other as their life purpose. It sets a precedent that the same could eventually happen here.

May your journey along the Purposeful Path be filled with passion and play.