What's the point of purpose?

One weekend last summer I was staying a couple of nights in a B&B where the host's husband told me over breakfast about a catastrophic cycle accident he’d suffered, leaving him for dead with pre-frontal brain and other injuries.

Thankfully restored to physical health, he found he had lost the ability to plan and direct his effort toward any complex goal, forcing him to step down from his salaried profession to become a helping hand and odd-job man around the property and gardens of the fine old church across the road. "I love the work", he said to me, "but I don’t have any meaning in my life".

I pondered this. From our amiable conversation on life and work, that didn’t seem to add up – so I asked him: "Are you sure? Talking to you I see lots of meaning in your life. Isn't it purpose that you feel you're lacking?" He brightened up and agreed vigorously. He found truth and comfort in the thought.

Now recalling that incident, I got to thinking about my own very recent transition into the emeritus professorial after-life, after 28 years’ service at London Business School (LBS). On hearing of my "retirement" I have got used to people asking me what I am going to “do”. The tart answer that usually comes to mind is, “Whatever I want, whenever I want.” I usually find a more polite variant, but that is how it is for me.

Lots of people dread retirement because it is a withdrawal of one kind of purpose, to be sure. For me, the flexibility and freedom are delicious. In this I count myself very fortunate, not least because I continue to run biography sessions – in which people explore their life stories – with executive groups at LBS.