What is Your Purpose?

There’s an old saying in the literary world that a man’s life is incomplete until he has tasted love, poverty and war.

Beginning with the latter, my closest brush came in January 1991. I was just graduating from the U.S. Army Airborne School at Ft. Benning, Georgia, when the bombs began raining down on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. As it turned out, that conflict was so short-lived that I missed out on the active war leg of the complete life.

As for poverty, well, although I come from a modest middle-class American family, I would hardly say that qualifies as poverty by global standards. And aside from some lean, post-college days working at the financial newspaper Investor’s Business Daily, I also would have to say that poverty mostly has eluded me.

When it comes to love, I think this is where I’ve more than made up for any deficit in the other two complete life components.

Love of family, friends, career, music, literature, philosophy, nature, fitness, sport, combat and, perhaps most of all, love of learning. These are the animating forces at the core of my being.

That love runs particularly deep when talking about the love I have for helping investors better understand — and better profit from — the financial markets. In fact, you might say that this love is a form of war on poverty itself… the poverty of knowledge that keeps investors paralyzed into subpar performance.

Ironically, my love for this pursuit also encompasses my own desire to be a complete man.

In Ayn Rand’s magnum opus “Atlas Shrugged” (in my opinion the very best novel ever written), one of the heroes of the novel is asked, “…what’s the most depraved type of human being?”

The answer: “The man without a purpose.”

This notion stuck with me as a guiding principle when I first read the novel as a 20-year-old trying to sort out the world. And ever since digesting this pithy profundity, I have set my life with “purpose” as my prime directive.

Your editor engaged in his “purpose” of communicating investing knowledge.

In The Deep Woods, my purpose is to shine a more luminous intellectual light on the issues that matter most to me, and that hopefully resonate with you. Sometimes those issues are economic, sometimes they’re social, sometimes they’re philosophic and sometimes they’re political.

Yet, every time, the issues are of personal importance to me, and achieving a better understanding of them is my purpose.

If you’re reading this, I hope sharing my purpose with you has helped you better understand your purpose.

Together, we can learn, grow, flourish and allow the very best within us to express itself — and we’ll do it all while having fun!

So, thank you for your time, attention and trust. I shall always value, cherish and respect them, and I will endeavor to always make this column worthy of you.

Now it’s your turn. Here’s what I want you to tell me: What is your purpose?

How do you see your life’s mission, and what animates your spirit and what is your prime directive?

I know this isn’t exactly a typical survey-style question, but hey, I’m not exactly a typical survey-style person — and I suspect you’re not either.

So, I’d love for you to tell me about your purpose, and doing so is as simple as sending me an email.

I look forward to your response.

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Way of the Bison

“A mindset of power, intelligence and curiosity: If you value your existence and aspire to live with significance daily, you may already be living the Way of the Bison credo.”

—Way of the Bison lifestyle website

Do you have a “spirit animal”? I do. My spirit animal is the bison, also known as the American buffalo. Why is the bison my spirit animal? Because the bison represents abundance, freedom and strength. Native Americans call the bison a wise teacher of living in balance with the “Great Mother.” As the bison roams, it undertakes a journey of discovery that requires endurance, strength, intelligence and the purposeful embrace of existence. And now you know why the bison is my spirit animal.

Wisdom about money, investing and life can be found anywhere. If you have a good quote that you’d like me to share with your fellow readers, send it to me, along with any comments, questions and suggestions you have about my newsletters, seminars or anything else. Click here to ask Jim.

In the name of the best within us,

Jim Woods