I’ve been writing this weekly column for a minute or two.

Make that 18 years. (I’ve written monthly columns for 23 years, but went weekly starting in 2007.)

A column of approximately 600 words times 50 columns each year equals about 30,000 words. This, multiplied by 18 years tallies to 540,000.

Half a million words.

When I did the math, I was nearly in disbelief. I never set out to write half a million words. I never even thought about it until today. I wouldn’t have thought it possible. Until it was. 

If I’d considered having 500,000 words as a goal back 18 years ago, it would have seemed mountainous. Unattainable, because it sort of was.

Until it wasn’t.

Isn’t that just like life — to sneak up on you like that?

I often ponder my purpose in life. I think many of us do. We long to know what we are here to accomplish. What we are here to learn and achieve. 

In that vein, I tend to think it has to be about really big, really consequential things. 

I should be working more. Traveling more. Reading more. Learning more. Volunteering more. Exercising more. Doing more. Being more. Seeking more. 

Changing the world more in really big ways.

We tend to think that life’s purpose comes in really big things. The birth of babies. The big new job. The sought-after promotion. Finally purchasing your dream home. Writing a best-seller. Creating the next best invention. Finding the gold at the end of the rainbow.

It can be overwhelming — pursuing the really big things. Sometimes we feel like a single drop in the ocean and conquering the big things feels like overcoming the tide.

But maybe the tide doesn’t need to be overcome. Maybe the big things in life aren’t always big things at all. Maybe they are little things.

A baby’s first smile. Planting a tree. Walking around the block without your cane. Watching your child put her feet into the ocean for the first time. Playing a board game on family night. Eating a meal together. Finding a pair of socks that match on the first try. Writing a simple set of words each week. 

The mundane, that isn’t so mundane when you look back later and reflect on the ripples your one drop may have caused. Did cause.

Because each drop in the ocean changes the water’s surface ever so slightly. This effect spreads outward, making the result much bigger than the drop itself. 

Maybe the really big things along with the regular things and the little things and everything in-between have the potential to ripple upon themselves and continue to grow.

For me, my passion has always involved words. As a young girl, I loved writing. It quite simply drove my soul and I understood that from the start. 

But I didn’t pursue that passion until later in life because I didn’t know how I could make it work. I didn’t see how it could fulfill a true purpose. Silly words typed on a screen — what sort of meaning could that bring? 

But at some point, in my mid-30s, I decided life might be passing me by and I might as well take a leap of faith and put my words out for all the world to see. 

And I did. 

And here we are 500,000 words later. 

Yet I still seek my purpose. Because words on paper still don’t feel like something big. Like saving a life or curing an incurable disease or being super famous. 

But maybe that’s not what purpose is meant to be. Maybe it isn’t about measuring ourselves against others, but simply against our own passions and ideals. Maybe it doesn’t come from one great big stupendous event, but from trudging through the mud, one step (or one word) at a time. 

Like a drop in the ocean.

Or maybe one drop that grows in time to half a million.

— Jill Pertler’s column Slices of Life appears regularly in the Times. She can be reached at 

slicescolumn@gmail.com.