Try asking these questions to yourself and typing some answers on the comment. See if you're the same person afterwards:
What do you think is your ultimate goal in life?
What thing in life [whether abstract or tangible] appeals to you the most?
What five things do you need to make you feel fulfilled/secure in your life?
What makes you feel powerful? How do you define a person's power?
Do you accept suffering in life? What can we ideally do, in your opinion, to ameliorate the amount of suffering humans endure in daily life?
Answers:
a)
I think my goal is to... learn in order to explore my various potentials as a person. Learning is paramount for me because its what we do in order to know... knowing gives you the right lubricant for your mind... and in general the fact that there's so much more to learn (i.e. self-acceptance, new skills, etc etc.) just motivates me to delve deeper into it more.
b)
I think the idea of being whole as a person appeals to me... having power over my looks and body (turned into a cultural thing but imo it matters more on a personal level). Getting to know myself in a deep way, really understanding the skills and weaknesses and vulnerabilities that I have so that I don't have to look for outer validation anymore (Jung associated the not needing validation thing to experiencing one's own creativity). Dynamic is a term that, as silly as that sounds, I want to embody in terms of my "ideal" self.
c)
1: Creativity, 2: Connection to people, ideally with my art but having more adept social skills would be awesome too, 3: A peaceful home 4: Self-confidence, self-trust, self-love (makes me wonder if these are more of like "muscles" that get developed 5: Learning, constant learning defeats ignorance, which is a beautiful thing
d)
To me power is a "can do" attitude to challenging situations. Think of the word "empowerment". Like how do people feel empowered? I think it boils down to the state of being able to do what you put your "mind" to ... So it might largely depend on what you think you can do (freedom) and what you can't... Having control over a situation; when one thinks he's losing that, he gets anxious about it. Keywords to think about: identity, being, doing, freedom, success, control, anxiety, influence
e)
I think suffering is a state of lacking personal freedom. Freedom from pain, over some tyrannical rule over you, freedom on how we feel about what people wil think. So is it our goal to conquer suffering? This has been a widely discussed topic throughout all of time actually. I think what can be taken from it is that suffering leads people to think of ways to better the way things are. Suffering allows us to feel for someone else. It can teach us new ways of being, of doing things, of feeling. Suffering gives life meaning because it makes us real people with hopes that we dream of achieving... in any given time. I think if we contemplate enough on suffering and perhaps allow it to lead us better into our heart/intuition something valuable can be taken from that. Perhaps being alone more, and creating something out of the pain; it might be worthwhile after all.
If you're interested, feel free to ask me questions about my answers!
