Purpose

While driving around town one afternoon, I noticed the prevalence of gated communities, homes and establishments. It is common practice in this day to have a gate, whether a cute, white picket fence, or practical metal interlinks, or thick, high walls. Even building doors act as gates – if you don’t have your ID or electronic pass you can’t get through.

Which led me to ask: Are gates meant to keep people in, or to keep them out?

Much later, someone remarked why I asked, and where did I get the question from? My response was, I formulated the question and that it came to be because of what I saw. But does that matter, I asked again, since I believed the answer is more important than the question itself.

So what is the answer?

The answer is both! Its job is to allow limited passage; its purpose, to demarcate the land. Those who are inside are meant to be inside and should stay inside, while those who are outside are not meant to be inside and should not come in. And the gate tells us where “inside” begins and “outside” ends. That is why a gate exists.

More often than not people take for granted the things that they see and use in their daily lives, not realising the impact that those things have on their person. Frequently the whys and wherefores escape us, and over time the compounded incomprehension rears its ugly head and confronts us.

Take, for example, the lowly jeep. What is the jeep’s purpose? To move people or goods from one point to another. It can also generate income for its operator and/or driver. But it is a conveyance; that it can also be a source of income is an added benefit, and not its primary purpose. Put simply: Will the jeep create income if it does not fulfil its purpose of transporting you to your destination? It can’t, because it’s not designed to make money in the first place. People pay for the ability to reach their destination, regardless of vehicle. If it is, in fact, costing more to maintain and run a jeep then it isn’t a cost efficient means of transport, even more so as a means of income.

Purpose is not readily seen nor understood. Purpose is that “hidden agenda” that requires some questioning on one’s part in order to surface. Ask yourself, without prejudice and presumption, why something is the way it is. You’ll be surprised at the answer.