How to find your purpose

I came a cross an article yesterday that talked about how to find your purpose in life and how to live it. This is something that I quite frequently think about, since I'm a person who doesn't want to do things in my life just for the sake of doing it. Things has to make sense to me, otherwise, why bother doing it. Right? I want to feel like I'm on the right path for me.

I graduated from university in 2009 after having completed a master degree in Peace, Conflict and International relations. In my studies, I always tended to put extra focus on racial issues and gender issues. Inequalities in this world really bothers me. And so I wrote a bachelor thesis about the Sweden Democrats, a racist party in Sweden, and a master thesis about female imams in China. Both evolving around the same topic, inequalities and discrimination. Since then, I have also worked as a Swedish teacher for refugees in Sweden. Another group in the society that is most often discriminated or at least sidelined. After that I worked in China as a Swedish teacher, while at the same time trying to promote some good Swedish values like equality and fairness. I later on got a job as an integration officer for the council, and was once again working with refugees coming to Sweden. I guess the common denominator in my studies and my jobs has been quite clear this far.

Now, I am opening up a Swedish cafe in Malaysia and to be honest, I haven't been able to fit this part in to this previous and clear red line. And so, to get back to the question in the article, what is my purpose in life? I think I'm quite clear already of what my purpose in life is: to fight inequalities and discrimination and to inspire other people to do the same. The big question is, how does me opening up a cafe in Malaysia relate to that purpose? I admit that I myself has not had the answer for that question until this week and I have been rather frustrated about not feeling like I'm doing things here in Malaysia that relates to my purpose in life. Until, I realized that I'm more than ever, actually living my purpose in life. Yes, I'm not working with inequalities in Malaysia right now, and I'm not conducting any studies about the racism in the Malaysian society, which basically are the reasons why I kind of never realized that I am changing peoples perceptions and prejudices just by being here and by being married to a man who looks different from me. Just by us leaving the house here in Penang, we are making people aware of that different cultures, religions, backgrounds and skin color doesn't really matter. Because if it did, then how could my husband and me be married and living together?

When I was younger, I always had the idea that my purpose of life would be a job or a task or something like that. I never considered that it could be just the way I chose to live my life and who to marry. And so, I guess, even this cafe and this blog also fit in on my path of life purpose although it was not as clear to me as a master thesis about a racist party in Sweden. Instead of being the researcher, I have now become the case study. And so today, there was a documentary film team here in our house, wanting to do an interview with me and my husband about mixed marriages. They found us through my blog Fika Penang. I am therefore now sure to say, that even by me opening up a cafe and blogging about it, I do continue to have the same purpose in life as I always had and wanted.

You can check out the previous work of the documentary film team here (Yellow Pictures)