Purposive action is to care for a certain outcome and to facilitate changes so as to bring it about - this pretty much characterises all of life and imbues it with a future orientation. To have a purpose and to fail of it or to fall short, to lose it seems to belong to higher forms of life, or where the purpose is to find a purpose, or to evade it. What is meant by 'higher' then is that the life process itself become optional. You require a consciousness and all the machinery of reflection, so that you can fail of life, or so that life can fail of you in a meaningful way, to conquer new pathways of doubt.