You are getting enough sleep. Or close enough. You are going to bed at a reasonable hour, waking up at a reasonable hour, doing the things you are supposed to do. And you are still exhausted. Not tired in the way a good weekend away would fix. Tired in a way that seems to sit underneath everything, that rest does not seem to touch, that you have quietly started to wonder might just be who you are now.

Purpose, in its most useful form, is not a dramatic discovery. It is a quiet orientation. A direction of travel. A set of values, held consistently, that guide the small decisions of an ordinary day. You probably already have it. You may just not be calling it that.

The care you bring to an ordinary morning — the greeting, the patience, the moment of genuine interest in a child's world — is depositing something into a child's development that does not show up on any observable measure but that shapes who they are becoming.

You will never see the full extent of what you are doing. Almost no one who does work that matters ever does.

This is not a consolation prize. This is the reality of meaningful work.