Purpose. A simple word that has been overcomplicated, over contemplated, and overcompensated. Purpose. An ordinary word that has the potency to push people to the brink of insanity, yet remains one of the most important questions that one can answer. Without it, life is irrelevant. Purpose. It’s what makes us matter.
Who knew that it would take the former Secretary of Commerce under Clinton and Secretary of Transportation under George W. Bush to help me begin to contemplate what this whole purpose thing is really all about? Although I had never seen Norman Mineta before, I envisioned at least a 6-foot tall man to walk through the corridor at the Nando’s in Dupont Circle. I imagined he would have security with him and a pomp that would infiltrate the entire room leaving most of us feeling inadequate in the face of such splendor. Because let’s face it, he’s kind of a big deal.
What happened next was not what I had expected. In walked an unassuming looking man along with his wife, introducing himself to people who were very well aware of who he was. You could call him a boss, but he chose to introduce himself to all of us as “Norm.”
This was all part of SALDEF’s objective to bring Asian American interns from around D.C. to meet a fellow Asian American leader and successful political activist. Other organizations present included JACL, or the Japanese American Citizens League, CAPAL, or Conference on Asian Pacific American Leadership and WLP, the Washington Leadership Program.
What started off the night was Mineta talking about what it takes to be successful in the public sector, especially in his role as a Congressman. He talked about two main principles that he lived by, ideals that he felt made him worthy of the prestigious positions he would go on to fill. One was accountability and the other was accessibility. What started as a conversation about the bright future of our generation led to a more serious discourse and a more somber tone following my question about his role as Secretary of Transportation during 9/11.
He talked about how he knew about as much as we did when the first airplane hit the Twin Towers. Shock could not adequately describe the way he internalized the event. Confusion was more like it. He told us about how he was sent to the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, an underground bunker below the White House. He talked about his course of action which included ordering the grounding of all civilian aircraft for the first time ever in U.S. history. Over 4,000 airplanes were grounded within two and a half hours. He also emphasized his stand along with President Bush in the days following 9/11 against profiling, the same profiling he suffered during the Japanese internment camps during World War II.
He ended with more general life advice about how you shouldn’t focus on those long-term goals, something I had been brainwashed into doing my entire adolescent and early adult life. He said to keep doing what you’re doing now and do it well. Don’t worry so much about eventually becoming a doctor, but rather focus on what you can do right now to help ensure that you do become a doctor. Focusing on some far-sighted goal often distracts you from the work that needs to be done today.
This idea of what my purpose is, is a question that causes me to cringe at the possibility that what I’m doing here on earth is inadequate. However, it’s the external expectation that largely blinds our own vision of what we want to accomplish in this world.
So, therefore, my purpose is to be me, today. Not something that I want to be in the future, not something that I perhaps was in my early days, but rather be Manjot in this present time. In some sense, what I gained overall from his talk to us was the importance of just being. What that means is really up to you.
SALDEF staff and SikhLEAD interns with Norm Mineta