Would you go back to high school if you could? Most of us wouldn't, even if we remember those years fondly. But there is one tradition that pulls us back anyway: the class reunion. And sometimes, the most important conversation you'll ever have happens in a gymnasium that smells exactly like it did in 1987.
When I graduated, my 600-plus classmates scattered across the country and around the world. Most of them I wouldn't see again until the five or ten-year mark. So when the invitations went out, the question most people faced wasn't logistical. It was emotional: do I go?
When you think about prepping for your reunion, what came up for you? Excitement? Or something closer to dread?
The Question Everyone Asks at a Reunion
I've thought about this a lot. Since the very first reunion was ever held, there's been a deeper question underneath all the small talk: do we go to learn about what others have done and are dreaming of doing, or do we go to judge and be judged by what we have or haven't accomplished?
The honest answer, for most people, is some combination of both. We care what others think. That's not a character flaw; it's human neurology. The brain's social circuits are wired for belonging and status recognition, and reunions activate both of those systems at once.
So when I arrived at my ten-year reunion, I felt genuinely good walking in. I was happily married to my college sweetheart. We were on the verge of starting a family. My career in pharmaceuticals was moving in the right direction. Life felt solid. I was ready.
And then the conversation started, and within about fifteen minutes, I noticed something. Almost every exchange followed the exact same script:
- What do you do?
- How are you doing?
- How is it going?
- Where do you live?
Status markers. Social positioning. A polite kind of comparison dressed up as curiosity. The questions weren't wrong, exactly. But they weren't getting at anything real, either.
The Question That Changes Everything
I decided to take a risk. Instead of staying in the script, I started asking one simple question: "Have you found your passion in life?"
That's it. Five words. And the effect was immediate.
Person after person lit up. They leaned in. They told me things they probably hadn't said out loud in years: stories of risk taken and paths abandoned, of work that felt like a calling and work that felt like a trap, of quiet satisfactions that didn't make sense to anyone else but mattered deeply to them. The question cut through the noise and went straight to the part of the conversation that actually means something.
When you ask someone about their passion, you aren't just gathering information. You're signaling something: you matter to me as a person, not just as a contact. That signal registers at a neurological level. The brain shifts from a defensive, socially-performative mode into something more open. More honest. More connected.
That shift is what made every conversation at that reunion feel different the moment I stopped asking the script questions and started asking the real one.
A Janitor, a Passion, and a Lesson in Impact
Then I walked up to someone I hadn't seen since graduation day. I asked the same question. And he just stood there.
Not uncomfortable silence. Something else. He looked at me like no one had ever asked him that before. Because, he told me, no one ever had.
As he started to talk, I could see the emotion in his eyes. His answer was a simple "Yes."
When I asked what he was doing for work, he told me he was one of the janitors at our old high school. And then he paused, like he was bracing for my reaction. He explained that he was a little nervous to say it, because he wasn't sure his path would match what others expected of him. That this might not look like success to the people in that room.
But then he kept going. He told me why he loved it. The energy of a school building in the morning. The particular kind of environment that gets created when hundreds of young people show up every day trying to figure out who they are. The fact that every night, he was home for dinner with his family. He had built a life that fit who he actually was, not who anyone else thought he should be.
That conversation is the only one I remember from that entire evening.
What Purpose Does to the Brain
Here's what struck me, reflecting on it afterward: when this man talked about his work, something changed in him. His posture opened up. His voice slowed down. The nervousness dissolved. He wasn't performing anymore; he was just telling the truth.
That's what purpose does at a neurological level. When we operate from a place of genuine meaning, the brain's threat-detection systems quiet down. Cortisol drops. Oxytocin, the bonding hormone associated with trust and social connection, rises. The conversation changes in quality because the person in the conversation has changed.
Living and working in alignment with purpose does several things at once:
- It alters perspective, helping us see our circumstances more accurately rather than through a lens of comparison or anxiety
- It shifts the energy of a conversation, making it feel less transactional and more genuine
- It reinforces what impact actually means, which is rarely about title or salary
- It makes a difference for the people around us, because presence and authenticity are contagious
- It builds relationships that last, because people remember how you made them feel, not what you told them you'd accomplished
The Social Rat Race and What It Costs
Most of us know the rat race exists. We just don't always recognize when we're in it.
Social media has made this harder. The curated highlight reel of other people's lives runs 24 hours a day now, and the brain isn't well-equipped to filter it. We compare. We measure. We calibrate our sense of worth against a stream of metrics that were never designed to measure what actually matters.
Living a life defined by what others want you to be is self-limiting in the most literal sense: it limits you to whatever image you're trying to sustain, which is never quite accurate and always exhausting. The cognitive load of managing a persona, in person and online, is real. It pulls resources away from the things that actually create meaning.
My friend at that reunion had found a way off the treadmill. Not because he stopped caring what people thought, but because he had something more grounding to return to: a clear answer to the question of what his life was actually for.
Bloom Where You Are Planted
There's an old phrase worth revisiting: bloom where you are planted. It sounds simple. It isn't.
To bloom where you are planted means to stop waiting for the right circumstances before you invest in the life you have. It means taking the opportunities available to you right now, in the role and context you're actually in, and bringing your full self to them rather than saving your best for some future version of your life that may never arrive.
That's not resignation. It's not settling. It's the recognition that meaning doesn't live somewhere in the future, and that the person who cleans the hallways of a high school can be more purposeful, more impactful, and more alive than the executive three floors up who has never once asked themselves why they do what they do.
The question "Have you found your passion in life?" is a coaching question at its core. It creates space. It signals respect. It invites the kind of self-reflection that most conversations, especially workplace conversations, never reach. And it requires nothing more than the willingness to slow down and actually listen to the answer.
My friend impacted me in ways he never knew. Until now. If you're leading people, or developing them, or coaching them through what comes next: start with that question. The conversation that follows will be the only one either of you remembers.
If you'd like to explore what purposeful leadership development looks like at your organization, let's start a conversation.
