Your “purpose” may not be such a big deal.

Why Aristotle would not choose the most purposeful of The Three Bricklayers.

A typical self-improvement workshop often includes the tale of The Three Bricklayers. It’s the “Freebird” of keynote speeches. You may have heard it:

A builder in need of a bricklayer is walking down the street when he sees three men working on a big church project. He asks the first man what he’s doing.

“I’m laying bricks,” the man answers, showing saintly patience with the stupid question.

The builder asks the same question of the second bricklayer. “I’m earning a living and providing for my family,” he says.

The third man delivers the inspiring punchline: “I’m building a cathedral!”

Chat GPT’s bricklayer apprently can also sing the blues.

That bricklayer has purpose, see. The builder is supposed to hire him because he will show up for work raring to go—knowing he isn’t just laying bricks but, with undaunting motivation, building sacred castles.

(The story never mentions why the man would leave a cathedral to work for the builder, but we won’t go there.)

Would Aristotle hire the cathedral-making bricklayer? I doubt it. Assuming he supplemented his philosophy income with a construction business, Aristotle most likely would focus on the first worker, the one who was simply laying bricks. Was the man absorbed in what he was doing? Did he seem proud of his hand-eye coordination? If so, perhaps bricklaying paired beautifully with the man’s precision-aligned soul.

The second bricklayer, concerned with providing for his family, would doubtless quit for a higher-paying line of work.

And Cathedral Guy? Maybe he has the soul of a stonemason and should be carving weird gargoyles instead of laying bricks. Or his soul inclines him more toward architecture or, who knows, the priesthood.

Aristotle would look for a bricklayer with a bricklaying soul. That man would be not just the best bricklayer but also the most soulful—and therefore the most human.

Well, what is especially human about linking our lives to our souls? What makes our species any more soulful than an albatross or a cockroach, those undaunted explorers of sea and darkness?

This is not a rhetorical question.

In my new book, I explore Aristotle’s theory of the soul and show how the words we play in our heads can link us up to our truest bricklaying souls. Words are our most human characteristic. And connecting ourselves to our Aristotelian souls help make us as human as humanly possible.

Plus, a rhetorically sophisticated bricklayer would have an added skill: The guy could talk investors into letting him form his company and make a fortune building cathedrals.