Many people are confused: since many important outcomes in life do not happen according to plan but emerge from accidental deviations, should we still act with purpose? Could purposefulness actually limit us? This question itself is very clever, but it asks at the wrong level. The issue is never "to have purpose or not," but rather where purpose and randomness should each stand within the structure of action. Structurally, purpose is a tool for anticipating the future; its role is to judge whether a direction is worth investing in. Randomness, on the other hand, does not arrive randomly; it almost only appears within systems that have already been opened by action. In other words, randomness does not occur when doing nothing, but naturally arises during the process of entering action, continuously pushing forward, and maintaining openness. The real question is: when purpose intervenes too early or too strongly in the process, it compresses the system’s openness. People begin to filter information, reject possibilities that deviate from their goals, and avoid uncertain but potentially valuable paths. Thus, randomness does not cease to exist but is preemptively excluded. Conversely, if there is no direction at all and everything is left to chance, the system cannot truly unfold due to a lack of sustained investment. Therefore, a mature action structure is never a binary choice but a clear division of roles: before action begins, purpose calibrates the direction and judges whether it’s worth pursuing; during the process, purpose withdraws from control, allowing the system to remain open and enabling randomness to generate; after the stage ends, it returns to the results, understanding what happened by chance, and uses that to adjust the next step. Height is not something that is "planned" into existence, but it is always generated within the direction. So, should we act with purpose or not? The answer is neither yes nor no, but that purpose is responsible for opening the direction, while randomness is responsible for raising the height. If purpose controls the process, it stifles possibilities; if purpose only calibrates the direction, it instead fosters randomness. Many people are stuck not because they lack effort or do not believe in chance, but because they either suppress the world with purpose or entrust everything to luck. True mature action leaves space for randomness within the direction.
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Many people are confused: since many important outcomes in life do not happen according to plan but emerge from accidental deviations, should we still act with purpose? Could purposefulness actually limit us? This question itself is very clever, but it asks at the wrong level. The issue is never "to have purpose or not," but rather where purpose and randomness should each stand within the structure of action. Structurally, purpose is a tool for anticipating the future; its role is to judge whether a direction is worth investing in. Randomness, on the other hand, does not arrive randomly; it almost only appears within systems that have already been opened by action. In other words, randomness does not occur when doing nothing, but naturally arises during the process of entering action, continuously pushing forward, and maintaining openness. The real question is: when purpose intervenes too early or too strongly in the process, it compresses the system’s openness. People begin to filter information, reject possibilities that deviate from their goals, and avoid uncertain but potentially valuable paths. Thus, randomness does not cease to exist but is preemptively excluded. Conversely, if there is no direction at all and everything is left to chance, the system cannot truly unfold due to a lack of sustained investment. Therefore, a mature action structure is never a binary choice but a clear division of roles: before action begins, purpose calibrates the direction and judges whether it’s worth pursuing; during the process, purpose withdraws from control, allowing the system to remain open and enabling randomness to generate; after the stage ends, it returns to the results, understanding what happened by chance, and uses that to adjust the next step. Height is not something that is "planned" into existence, but it is always generated within the direction. So, should we act with purpose or not? The answer is neither yes nor no, but that purpose is responsible for opening the direction, while randomness is responsible for raising the height. If purpose controls the process, it stifles possibilities; if purpose only calibrates the direction, it instead fosters randomness. Many people are stuck not because they lack effort or do not believe in chance, but because they either suppress the world with purpose or entrust everything to luck. True mature action leaves space for randomness within the direction.