A Shift Is Already Underway

In a school gymnasium somewhere near you, hordes of teenagers are currently sitting one of at least a dozen exams – sometimes double that amount – in a gallant effort to take the next step into adulthood.

There’s no choice for them but to follow this age-old process that you and I undoubtedly underwent, too. If they are to progress in life, the story goes, they must sit numerous exams to prove their knowledge and intellect, before taking a leap onto a career path by narrowing down their subject choices at college or 6^th form, and then again by choosing a university degree.

By the age of 21, our young people have often cemented themselves to a path that was laid out at just 16 years old, weighed down with bucket loads of debt, and all the while, for many, without a sense of surety that this is the road they want to spend the next forty years traversing.

But this is how life works, doesn’t it?

For most people, work is something we have to do, and for the lucky ones among us, its also something we want to do. Whether we love our jobs or not, it certainly gives us a sense of purpose – it’s something to get up for each morning, it shapes our life with routine, and hopefully gives us a sense of satisfaction, as well as connection to other humans and pride in what we achieve. While there are of course other things that shape life with purpose (such as raising children, having a hobby or playing a sport), for most people, our purpose comes from our work.

On the other hand, there’s plenty of research that describes what happens when people don’t have purpose. While it may not be true for everyone who doesn’t work, many people report falling into apathy or depression, becoming isolated, and struggling to find meaning after the loss of a job or even retirement. Purpose, therefore, could be described as a fundamental human need.

For most of human history, purpose has been something we grew into. It was shaped by the roles available to us — the work we did, the communities we belonged to, the expectations placed upon us. But that’s beginning to change.

As AI accelerates at an unprecedented rate, and more and more companies turn to automation and digitisation to do the roles previously filled by humans, the impact on people’s livelihoods is already being seen.

Our young people are acutely aware of this future reality – while adults worry about kids using AI to write essays and cheat on exams, what many young people are thinking about is not how AI can help them, but how AI is likely going to hinder them. As one young woman told me: “My teachers are putting all this pressure on us to do well in our exams and figure out what we want to be in the future, but we don’t even know if there will be any jobs for us by then.”

What becomes of our means to find purpose, if work no longer exists?

The Hidden Role Work Has Played

I got my first job at age 16, folding clothes in a shop for hours on end, and, if I was lucky, standing on the checkout till. It was boring and paid £2.85 an hour, yet it was important to me. I made friends, I felt grown up, and I had my own cash to spend as I wished.

Fast forward a few years and finding meaningful work became a lot more pressing. I knew (even at a relatively young age) that I wanted to do work with meaning and to make a difference in the world, and stumbled into working with children and young people in education settings, which was to become my passion and purpose for the next twenty-plus years.

Of course, we also want to be recompensed for the work we do, but research tells us that money alone isn’t enough. For example:

• A global Randstad survey of 26,000 workers across 35 countries found that for the first time in 22 years, work-life balance ranked above pay as the most important factor at work.
• In another survey, researchers found that 66% of professionals would leave their current role for work that better aligned with their sense of purpose.
• Gallup research found employees with a strong sense of purpose were 5.6 times more likely to be engaged at work than those without one.

Even before AI disruption, humans were already searching for something beyond income. We don’t just need employment: we need meaning, contribution, direction, identity, belonging.  And that becomes especially important in a future where traditional work structures may weaken.

Perhaps this tells us something important: humans were never just looking for jobs. We were looking for meaning.

A Generation Without Meaning

What becomes, then, of those school halls full of teenagers in five, ten, or fifteen years’ time? As we continue to churn kids through the system which prioritises generalisation over specialisation, and standardisation over interest, passion and purpose, what happens if the amount of jobs available is dramatically reduced, or, more positively speaking perhaps, humans of the future are no longer required to work, receiving instead some form of universal basic income and enjoying a much lower cost of living thanks to the depreciation that tech could provide, as some futurists claim?

Where do our young people find purpose then, when they’ve never been taught its importance?

In a worst-case, doomsday scenario, whole generations of purposeless kids could become disenfranchised, embroiled in addiction and crime with nothing to fill their days. A perhaps more likely scenario is the subtler (but no less damaging) outcome of internal loss, rather than external damage. Disconnection, a loss of agency, depression, isolation and loneliness, and seeking meaning through escapism and consumption.

We are already witnessing plenty of this internalised lack of purpose, meaning and self-actualisation, as evidenced by soaring mental health issues and rising reports of loneliness in youth and adults alike. The telltale signs already exist, as does the answer.

If the external structures that once gave us purpose begin to fall away, where will purpose come from?

It will need to come from within.

Why This Matters for Children

While our teachers and schools may still believe the rhetoric that the purpose of education is to prepare children for future jobs, the truth is far more nuanced.

We are preparing them for existence: in a world that in all likelihood will look, feel and be experienced in very different ways.

Yet, very little in our current systems is designed to help children:

• Understand themselves
• Explore what brings them alive
• Develop an internal sense of direction
• Experience meaningful contribution beyond performance

If we were to think more critically about what children and young people truly need, we would create schools or systems that focus heavily on understanding ourselves from the inside-out. Not just knowledge acquisition or memorisation, or understanding the outside world, but also understanding ourselves.

Reframing Purpose

Imagine if someone had asked you at a young age:

• What drives you?
• What are you naturally good at?
• What do you love to do that brings a sense of joy?
• How do you express your creativity?
• What comes naturally to you?
• What excites you that you want to learn more about?
• What do you do that makes you feel lost in time because you flow so effortlessly with it?
• Where is the edge of your comfort zone that could be stretched to make you feel accomplished and alive?
• What gifts do you have to share with others?

To explore yourself so deeply from a young age would truly be a gift, and from it would arise a natural sense of purpose and meaning, via exploration, expression and contribution. In this way, purpose doesn’t become one life mission that must be found and accomplished. It becomes an ever-evolving and growing relationship with how we show up in the world.

Where The Spark Gets Ignited

This is the space The Spark exists to explore. When a human is guided to know themselves deeply, and to express who they truly are, all of their inherent gifts, talents and beauty are naturally shared, in service to the world in some way.

Whether we’re sharing our art or music or writing with others, as I am now, or we’re building a home for someone to live in, or providing end-of-life care, or one of a million other ways we can express our passions – the sharing of who we are, our unique Spark of humanness, becomes a gift to the world.

The Spark can’t express itself when we’re pigeon-holed or following someone else’s track, or when we’re not supported to know who we are or what our purpose is. The world loses something precious when the Spark is dimmed, lost or unknown.

The easiest and most simple thing we can do is to help the next generation to know who they really are. The future may not need our children to work in the ways we have. But it will need them to be self-aware, connected, creative and purposeful.

The question is not whether they will find something to do. It’s whether they will know who they are when they do it.