Purpose Vs Happiness

The kitchen light’s on at 3:17 a.m. Again. The house is quiet except for the fridge humming and the ghost of my coffee steam curling in the cold air. Been up since 1 a.m. fixing a blown breaker at the old Miller place—three hours of sweating in the attic, then the walk home in the dark. My feet ache, my back’s tight. Just wanted to sit with a cup and not think about anything.

Then I saw it. On the fridge, taped to the magnet shaped like a duck: my youngest, Maya, drew a stick figure holding hands with a bigger stick figure. Me, she called it. And a heart. Not fancy. Just crayon, a little crooked. She’d left it there after breakfast, forgotten.

I stood there, coffee cup in hand, not drinking it. Just looking. Not at the drawing. At the why of it. The way she’d drawn me holding her hand, like I was supposed to. Like she knew I was trying. Not because I was happy—hell, I’m tired half the time—but because I was there. Doing the next thing. Fixing the breaker. Making the coffee. Tucking her in.

That’s when it hit me, quiet as a mouse: Purpose ain’t the big, shiny thing you chase. It’s not happiness, either. It’s the doing. The quiet moments where you’re just... showing up. Even when you don’t feel like it. Even when the only thing you want is to sit in the dark with your coffee and not think.

I didn’t cry. Just touched the drawing with my thumb, like she’d done. Then I made another cup. The coffee was cold now. But the quiet in the kitchen? It felt like something sacred. Not because it was perfect. Because it was real. And it was mine.

— Jimmy Hawkins, just a dad figuring it out

— Jimmy Hawkins, asking the hard questions