10/11/2025
I received this story in an email from Simon Squibb called The Lantern Bearer. It's about purpose and why we do what we do. It got me thinking 🤔 which is always the sign of a good story to me 🖊
In a vast desert, there was a village surrounded by darkness.
At night, people would get lost in the dunes and never return.
The elders said:
“If someone could build a path of lanterns stretching to the next town, no one would ever be lost again.”
They elders hired men, the strongest in the lands…
These men carried dozens of lanterns at once, but the weight exhausted them before they reached even a mile.
They hired the smartest men around, who mapped perfect routes, but quit after one night when the sandstorms erased their progress.
Then came a man who had lost his brother to the darkness.
He was one single man, with skinny arms and not the brightest.
The elders ignored him,
“We’re not paying you! If the strongest and the smartest could not do it, you have no chance.”
But the man didn’t want gold. For him, it was the thing he could not live without doing.
He began by taking one lantern. He walked to the first dune. Placed it. Walked home.
The elders laughed.
“One lantern does nothing.”
But the next night, he placed another.
And another.
And another.
He did not rush. He did not complain. He smiled, because every lantern meant one less person would be lost like his brother.
After weeks, children joined him. Then families. Then travellers.
Not because the task was exciting, but because they felt what he felt.
They understood why it mattered.
Months later, a glowing road stretched across the desert and no one was lost again.
When people asked how he did what the strongest and smartest could not, he said:
“They tried to finish the path for themselves.
I built it to help others.”
Lesson:
Purpose is not motivation.
Purpose is your reason.
Purpose is pain transformed into direction.
Skill makes people admire you.
Purpose makes people follow you.
And when people follow you, you can achieve what no corporation can.
