Beyond Position

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The other day, I found myself listening to an interview David Axelrod conducted with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Axelrod asked AOC whether she had made a mistake by saying something that could have hurt her chances of running for a higher office. Her answer stopped me cold.

“[People] assume my ambition is positional,” she said. “They assume my ambition is a title or a seat. And my ambition is way bigger than that. My ambition is to change the country.”

I sat with her statement for a long time.

Whether you agree with AOC’s politics or not (and I know many of you don’t), I want to ask you to set your opinions aside for a moment. Because what she said isn’t really about politics. It’s about something more fundamental than that. It’s about why you do what you do. It’s about whether your reason for getting up every morning is tied to a specific title or position, or whether it’s tied to something larger. An outcome. A change you want to see in the world. A North Star that no election, appointment, or job title can give you or take away.

That distinction—positional ambition versus purpose-driven ambition—is one I keep turning over in my mind, because I think it explains everything about why some people create lasting change, and others don’t.

Harrison Ford also summed it up well in his commencement address to Arizona State University last week: “Passion and purpose are not the same thing. Passion brings you joy. Purpose brings you meaning. Passion gets you out of bed in the morning, but purpose allows you to sleep at night.”

So, what is your purpose? I think it’s a question worth asking yourself. Do you know why you do what you do?

I want to pause on that question for a moment, because I’ve come to believe that naming your real purpose and speaking it out loud takes real courage. And once you name it, you’re accountable to it. You can’t hide behind a job title or a role or someone else’s expectations anymore. When you say out loud, this is why I do what I do, you’ve made a commitment to yourself and the world. That vulnerability is exactly why so many people never realize their purpose. And it’s exactly why the ones who do tend to change the world.

I know I’ve been writing about this from different angles over the past few weeks. But I keep coming back to it because I think it’s the most important question any of us can ask ourselves right now. Not what position do I hold or want to hold, but why am I here? What am I here for?

I know I’m lucky because I grew up watching two people who knew exactly what their purpose was. My mother didn’t start the Special Olympics because she wanted a title or a position. She started it because she looked at the world, saw people being left behind, and decided that was unacceptable. Her reason was ferocious and clear. She didn’t need anyone’s permission. She didn’t need an office or a mandate. She needed a reason, and she had one.

My father was the same way. His fight to alleviate poverty in this country wasn’t about power. It was about purpose. It was about the deep, unshakeable belief that every human being deserves dignity, and that the measure of a society is how it treats its most vulnerable members.

I watched both of them work from that place beyond position. And for a long time, I think I took it for granted—the clarity of it, the freedom of it—until I had to find my own purpose.

I never set out to be an Alzheimer’s advocate or a women’s health advocate. And yet I became one because somewhere along the way, my heart knew something my mind hadn’t caught up to yet. I had not just a story to tell, but a story to rewrite. Deep within my soul, I sensed that something fundamental needed to change. And I felt pulled—not pushed—toward changing it.

It wasn’t a job. It wasn’t even ambition in the traditional sense. It was an urgency from within. The kind that won’t leave you alone. The kind that finds you in the middle of the night, that follows you into hospital rooms and across conference tables and into every conversation you have until you finally stop pretending you can ignore it and just say: Yes. Yes, this is mine. This is what I’m here for.

What I have is a reason. I watched my father succumb to Alzheimer’s. I watched my mother struggle with her health her entire life, doctor to doctor, year after year, with too few answers and too little support. And then I remember being a young mother myself, hospitalized for weeks while pregnant with my fourth child, with no one able to tell me what was wrong. It turned out to be hyperemesis. But for weeks, no one knew. And I remember lying there thinking: this cannot be the story. Not for me. Not for my daughters. Not for anyone’s daughters.

Somewhere along the way, I said, that’s it. I’ve had it. I am going to radically reframe women’s health. My mission is to make sure that when my daughters and granddaughters, and your daughters and granddaughters, walk into a doctor’s office, they have a completely different experience than my mother had. Than I had. I believe it starts with the brain and covers every part of the body. And I know it will only happen if medical schools begin to teach women’s health as its own discipline. If hospitals open dedicated women’s health centers. If the federal government allocates real money to study and understand women’s health across every stage of life. This is the work of a village, and I am committed to being part of that village and to telling the story of where we are and where we need to go. Because when women have their health, they will radically impact this country. They will move humanity forward. That is not a hope. That is a fact.

I don’t need a position to do that. What I need is my health, my drive, my brain, my imagination, and my determination. That is my North Star. It doesn’t change depending on who is in the White House or what the political climate looks like. It doesn’t require a title. It just requires me to keep showing up, keep asking questions, and keep pushing for answers. That, I’ve come to understand, is what an assignment looks like from the inside. Dr. Rachel Rubin lives that truth every day—fighting to get women access to vaginal estrogen and DHEA therapy, treatments for UTIs so simple and so safe they should be routine, yet remain out of reach for millions.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the people I most admire, and what almost all of them have in common is this: they are remarkably clear about why they do what they do. Not what they do. Why. That clarity is magnetic. It’s also what separates people who create real change from people who simply occupy positions of power. A title can be taken away. A purpose cannot.

Think about the people in your own life who have moved you, shaped you, or changed you. I’d be willing to bet it wasn’t their job title that did it. It was their reason. Their conviction. The sense that they were working toward something beyond themselves.

That quality is available to all of us. You don’t need to run for office to have it. You don’t need a platform or a following or a seat at any particular table. You need a reason. A real one. One that gets you out of bed in the morning and keeps you going when the road gets hard. And it will get hard. Expect it to get hard.

That brings me to José Andrés. José has no interest in positional power. What he has is an unshakeable belief that food can change lives and that no human being should go hungry. He believed that in the middle of the worst disasters on earth, someone can show up with a warm meal and remind people that they are not forgotten. He has taken that belief into war zones, into disaster areas, and into places most people flee. He has fed millions of people across the world, not because of any title or position, but because he knows exactly why he does what he does. And that reason is, as far as I can tell, inexhaustible. His piece runs in The Sunday Paper today. Read it. And then ask yourself what his example is asking of you.

One more thing before I let you go. In the next two weeks, there will be primaries and elections in states across the country. And I want to offer you one simple lens for evaluating anyone on any ballot: ask what their reason is. Not what office they want. Not what their résumé looks like. Ask why they’re running. Do they want a specific job, or do they want to change something specific for the people they would serve? Are they running toward a position or toward an outcome? That question will tell you almost everything you need to know. It works for candidates. It works for colleagues. It works for yourself.

Here is what I’ve learned after a lifetime of listening to people: behind every reason is a story. Every person who wakes up burning to change something—their community, their country, the world—has a story that lit that fire. It may be a story of loss. Or love. Or injustice witnessed up close. Or a moment in a hospital room, or a kitchen, or a classroom that they have never been able to forget. Your reason lives inside your story. And your story is worth hearing.

So here is my invitation to you this week. Sit down and finish this sentence:

I do what I do because I want to live in a world where…

That blank is your North Star. Everything else—every decision, every sacrifice, every long day—is just the road to get there. You don’t need a position to change the world. What you need is internal power. The kind you were born with. The kind no one can give you or take away. Our world needs you to use it. It needs hope. It needs nurturing. It needs compassion. It needs to be radically reframed, just like women’s health.

You know why you’re here. Now name it. Claim it. And get to work. Your purpose is the only position that has ever really mattered.

Also in this week’s issue:

• Could This Simple Ritual Bring Us Closer Together?

• Sunday Paper Guest Opinion: The Simple UTI Fix Some Doctors Aren’t Prescribing