What defines you: output or purpose?

(generated by ChatGPT)

The Feast of Candlemas, 2 February, is the quiet hinge of the Christian year. At forty days old, Jesus is taken to the Temple and, with that, our Christmas celebration ends. There, Mary and Joseph are met by Simeon and Anna who have each spent a lifetime of prayerful waiting and attentive watchfulness.

The thing about Candlemas is that it's a festival about recognition not activity; about noticing what is present not creating something new. It's a far cry from the output-driven activity that shapes many of our working years.

Maybe that contrast feels uncomfortably close to home? We're trained to answer the question “What do you do?” with evidence: outcomes, roles, responsibilities, results. Output becomes shorthand for value. Even when work is meaningful, it seems our purpose must always be justified by activity. When that activity slows (in retirement, transition, or changing seasons) the question of what defines us doesn’t go away. It just becomes harder to avoid.

Simeon and Anna don’t do much, they simply name what they see: the Christ child in their midst. Their purpose isn’t located in output or authority, but in attentiveness. What matters is not what they are responsible for, but what they are able to recognise.

What defines you in this season and what will in the next:

* what might purpose look like when activity recedes?

* what are you learning to notice now that you couldn’t before?

* who are you becoming when work is no longer doing the defining?

* what might it mean to let purpose emerge, rather than prove itself?