Zachary Swanson

A growing body of research links purpose in life to a wide range of developmental benefits. Yet before individuals can live purposefully, they must articulate commitments that are both personally meaningful and oriented beyond the self. Despite its importance, the search for purpose has received limited empirical attention and is often described as uncomfortable, particularly among adults. We propose that patience may be a key resource for navigating this process. Drawing on two qualitative studies, we examine how religious and non-religious young adults understand patience and how it functions in the search for purpose. Findings suggest that patience helps regulate the temporal demands of purpose development, enabling individuals to remain engaged in an uncertain, iterative process. By balancing action with waiting, tolerating ambiguity, and supporting the integration of self-focused exploration with beyond-the-self aims, patience facilitates not only the pursuit of purpose but also its formation.

Aristotle's theory of moral character focuses on developing virtues, the deep internal dispositional traits from which external actions naturally flow. Aristotle describes moral virtue as a human excellence that can be developed through practice. The morally worst person is the vicious person who does the wrong thing, desires the wrong thing, and doesn't even know the right thing to do—perhaps even mistaking the wrong thing to do for the right thing. This was the sort of person Eleanor was when she entered The Good Place. One objection to the possibility of moral development is called situationism: the claim that people don't really live according to moral character but are overwhelmingly shaped by the situations around them. As Eleanor learns in The Good Place, the road to being a better person starts with caring about those close to us.