I watched the film, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, recently. The film, based on Patrick Süskind's novel Perfume, is dark and a little disturbing. It tells the story of Jean-Baptiste, an orphan in 18th century Paris with a unique sense of smell which as he grows up causes him to seek and bottle the smell or essence of life.
Driven in by this sense of purpose he kills beautiful
young women in order to extract their essence. In the end he does find the
essence of life, after a series of murders and macabre experiments. But it also
destroys him and he returns to his birth place to die.
It is a story about the obsessive pursuit of what seems
to Jean-Baptiste to be a noble goal. He
seeks something he believes to be ultimately important, worth the sacrifices (both his and those
of his victims) along the way. And yet it brings only cruelty and suffering to
others.
In our working lives, a sense of purpose gives our work value and meaning and can help us feel proud about the things we do. But sometimes, a sense of purpose can become too overwhelming, those who
share it too zealous, and the results too destructive to justify the means.