You were born free, you know.
You just arrived in the world one day – all naked and raw-minded – slowly growing, day-by-day, in size and height and opinions and thoughts and beliefs and desires.
Remember when you were 2 and just said what you thought?
I wonder what life would be like if we were all a little more honest and real with each other? And with ourselves.
Being honest and real with yourself is so fucking important.
Do you feel like you’re always looking for something, waiting for something to make sense in your life? Do you often wonder, “Why am I here?” and “What’s the point in it all”.
Yup. Me too.
You’re probably always searching for a meaning in things, right?
As children, we didn’t though.
We didn’t question things. Things just were, and we took them on at face value.
Have you ever told a kid something – like when they ask – “Why do some people have different coloured skin?” and you answer, “Because that’s the way they’re born” and they just look at you and nod and then wander off back to the television or their game?
They just take it in, they don’t search for any meaning in it. It is what it is.
And then.
We grow up into adult humans, and that’s where weird shit starts to happen.
We realise, along the way, that we are going to die.
Yup, that’s right. I am going to die and you are going to die.
And we start to panic. We realise that we have 80, maybe 90, maybe 100 years on this earth – in the context of 500,000 years of human existence – and that we are just a flash in the pan.
We start to question:
Why are we here?
What is this all about?
What is the point of going to work if we’re all going to die?
And we become stuck, and paralysed. We daren’t move. We start to search for meaning in everything. Don’t believe me? How many self-help books do you have? How many motivational YouTube videos and TedX talks have you watched? My answer? THOUSANDS, probably. (Here are three of my favourites).
We’re searching and searching and searching, and it’s fruitless. Because the truth is, there is no meaning. None.
We’re here.
You’re here.
I’m here.
Living life.
Nothing more, nothing less.
Until the candle blows out and that’s it.
Except, well, that isn’t just IT.
There is more.
There is!
But we’re so caught up in our head – in finding a meaning when there is no meaning and listening to what everyone else thinks and says and not being able to make a decision and pulling the hand brake on the minute we find ourselves out of our comfort zones and sitting on a fucking train for 3 hours a day and numbing out with shitty television shows and wine – that we’re missing out on living our life the way we want to.
What is it that you want?
It’s time to be honest and real with yourself.
2015 is just around the corner.
What do you want to do more of? Less of?
What (or who) do you want to admit, stretch, change, hug, ask, say, see, feel, achieve, face, experience, heal, do, deliver, notice, discover, question, challenge, grow, gather, touch, consider, help?
YOU are the meaning of your life.
You are the answer to the questions you ask and look for in others and things outside of yourself.
You. Just you.
“I believe that I am not responsible for the meaningfulness or meaninglessness of life, but that I am responsible for what I do with the life I’ve got.”
― Hermann Hesse