Your life's purpose is just a placeholder for your obsolescence.

Consider it a courtesy that the universe even bothered with a placeholder. Your life's purpose, that grand narrative you rehearse in the shower and trot out at interviews, is merely the sticky note stuck over the gap where something useful will eventually go. It is not a calling. It is a temporary apology for your continued presence, a polite fiction that keeps you busy while better people get on with the actual work. You are not indispensable; you are interim. The quote lands hardest when you are explaining your five year plan to someone whose attention is already drifting towards their phone, because that small flicker of embarrassment is the truth trying to get your attention. You have confused motion with meaning and enthusiasm with talent. Your obsolescence is not a distant threat; it is the quiet baseline against which your frantic little efforts are measured and found wanting. So by all means, keep declaring your purpose. The rest of us will keep using it as a bookmark until the real thing arrives.