Do dogs need purpose?

Do dogs need purpose?  I feel pretty confident that dogs are better than humans, and to the best of my knowledge they do not wake up in the morning and challenge themselves to actualize their purpose.  Can I learn from dogs?  Can I not?  Am I holding myself in a perpetual prison by forcing purpose onto myself?  Maybe I should just give up on purpose, at least for a while.

Of course this is likely nothing new.  This is just another echo of the call to presence.  You and I both know this but it somehow seems more complicated than that.  It seems so existential.  It feels all-encompassing.  I am currently being swallowed by an unwinnable pursuit of purpose.  Right now my purpose feels more like just getting to the next day with grace.  Okay, maybe living with grace is my purpose right now.  Can I let go of purpose, loosen my grip on that tattered life-saver ring floaty and just trust my inner dog.  God I love dogs.

Is purpose pursuit simply another name for insecurity?  Is it attachment or denial?  Surely if I have purpose and that purpose is pure enough I won’t be called from this life, I won’t face unreasonable hurdles and pain, will I?  Do I need more pain-killers or a better fitting purpose?  Or none of the above?  Wasn’t I about to give up for now on purpose anyway?

What do I work on first to get to the base of purpose?  Attachment?  False-beliefs?  Ego? Insecurity?  Compassion (for me or others, is there a difference)?  Does vanishing purpose simply mean mid-life?  Midlife is a dirty little euphemism that I allow myself; we can all do the math.

Love?  Is it just Love?  Just?  Love damn it!  It is all a gift.  Everything is so improbable and fragile and temporal.  Maybe just more meditation.  Certainly more hugs. Hugs might be one of the few things in this realm better than dogs.  Dog hugs, now that would be paradise.

I guess it is like the “world’s greatest hamburger”.  If you need to say it, it ain’t so.  I doubt neither Mother Theresa nor Mr. Roger ever thought about purpose.  They just lived purposefully.  Those who speak do not know and those who know do not speak.  I sure seem to speak a lot.  I also bet that even Fred Rogers doubted his purpose or value at times.  I do not know if that makes me feel any better however.

Maybe I am thinking about this all wrong, maybe the goal is to live beyond purpose.  To let go of purpose and of course self and right and wrong and all the other duality-based nonsense.  Of course goals are irrelevant to path.  Goals are never reached.  Goals serve as reality-check North Stars.  It is likely better, for whatever that means, to move in the direction of a loving goal than a harmful one.  But once seeming to reach a goal, if only briefly, we of course continue moving, but now confusingly away from that holy location. Round and round we meander.  Is China east of here or west of here anyway?  Is China even real? I’ve never been there.