I have repeatedly spoken and written about purpose.
Across earlier posts, I have argued that purpose is fuel for changemaking; explored the idea that each of us possesses gifts, experiences, and motivations that point toward particular forms of contribution; and written about superpowers, mandates, and the strange experience of feeling repeatedly drawn toward work that is neither convenient nor obviously rewarded.
Those ideas remain central to my thinking. Yet the deeper I go into this work, the more they seem to point toward another question entirely: What are changemakers for?
This may sound obvious, odd, or both. We tend to think of changemakers as individuals with causes, ideas, wounds, gifts, convictions, and projects. We ask what drives them, what problems they are solving, and how we can help.
All useful questions.
But if changemakers are real — more than a corporate buzzword or aspirational LinkedIn identity, but as people predisposed toward transformation — then another question becomes unavoidable.
Why do changemakers exist?
Across countries, sectors, professions, ideologies, and generations, some people seem persistently drawn to changemaking. They notice problems others normalize. They imagine alternatives others dismiss. They struggle to disengage from harms they did not create. They continue engaging long after exhaustion, cynicism, self-interest, or social pressure would have persuaded many others to stop.
Not all changemakers agree. Not all succeed. Not all are even pursuing the same future. Still, they are everywhere.
What if societies require transformation in the same way they require continuity?
What if human communities need people who are unusually sensitive to unrealized possibility? People who repeatedly question inevitability. People who become uncomfortable when preventable harm is normalized. People willing to move toward uncertainty in pursuit of a future that does not yet exist.
Goodness knows we need them now.
Perhaps we always have — whether anybody, changemakers included — recognized the function clearly or not.
Human beings are astonishingly capable of normalizing the unbearable. We adapt to institutions that degrade us, incentives that distort reason, technologies that outpace our ethics, economies that drain us, and narratives that shrink our hopes.
This capacity to adapt can protect us. But at times, it can also trap us. Changemakers, at their best, disrupt that trap.
They are not the whole answer. They are not saviors. They are not automatically wise, ethical, effective, or right. But they may perform a necessary function inside human systems: noticing where reality no longer fits the frame, where harm has been normalized, where possibility has been declared impossible too soon.
Studying changemakers reminds me of immune systems
Healthy immune systems do not dominate the body. They detect threats, respond to harm, support repair, and help living organisms survive what might otherwise overwhelm them.
Without an immune system, the body becomes dangerously vulnerable. With an overactive or misdirected one, the body can self-sabotage. This feels increasingly useful to me as a metaphor for changemakers.
A society without changemakers would likely struggle to adapt. A society composed entirely of changemakers would likely implode.
The work, then, is not to romanticize changemakers. Nor is it to dilute, silence, or punish them for picking at what others would rather leave alone. The work is to understand what function they perform, what conditions allow that function to become regenerative rather than destructive, and what kinds of support, ethics, relationships, competencies, and institutions might help changemakers serve transformation well.
This matters because changemakers are often treated as anomalies. Too disruptive. Too intense. Too idealistic. Too impatient. Too difficult. Too unwilling to accept “that’s just how things are.”
Sometimes, all of that is fair.
Yet perhaps some of what makes changemakers difficult is inseparable from what makes them useful. The person who cannot stop asking whether the system is solving the wrong problem may prevent pseudo-consensus. The person who balks at existing constraints may chip away until unrealized possibility comes into view. The person who feels responsible for harms they did not create may help an entire society take responsibility.
Without changemakers, many necessary transformations may never happen. Purpose, in this sense, is not only personal. It is ecological.
The question is not simply, What gives my life meaning? It may also be, What kind of contribution does the world seem to need of me?
Changemakers’ contribution seems to be helping systems change before their failures become irreversible. What if that is their function?
And if changemakers perform a function within transformation, the next question follows naturally: Do all changemakers play the same role?
I no longer think they do. And that realization may prove just as important as discovering changemakers themselves.
References:
https://changemakershandbook.substack.com/p/how-to-spot-a-change-maker-signs
https://changemakershandbook.substack.com/p/playlist-purpose-is-fuel-for-changemaking
https://changemakershandbook.substack.com/p/most-people-are-not-changemakers
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