Essays

[Sash]

I know that the frustrations and dissatisfactions of my day-to-day life are stemming from one fundamental thing: I am not yet living fully in my purpose.

I have struggled for a long time to determine what exactly my life's purpose is. I have done exercises and journaling and meditation. At best, I have received information regarding my life's purpose in fleeting ways. While tremendously inspiring and in great contrast to my day-to-day perspective, these fleeting moments of clarity were but fleeting. If I had to quantify it, it would make up about 0.01% of my lived experience. The rest of it is much like it is now: a cold, mechanical existence focused on ends that I believe I must achieve, but these ends do not inspire me.

From a collective perspective, why is it that it can be so difficult for any given individual to know what they are meant to do in life, in the broadest sense? Why, on the other hand, does it seem that others realize this more quickly? How much of the process of finding your own life's purpose is up to your own actions, and how much of it is up to chance encounters and fateful decisions? I feel that most of those who find meaning in life most quickly are those that encounter a chance phenomenon or convergence of fate that speaks to them, and them only, and tells them the nature of who they are, in reference to the totality of their lives. For others, who can perceive only the mechanics of status, output, recognition, and cookie-cutter progression, see nothing of the totality at all or willfully ignore it.

But why, as someone who recognizes even this, be blind to my own life's purpose?

There is a double-sidedness to "having had" awareness: It is the pain of knowing there is more, without living the "more". It is the torture of having tasted clarity, while proceeding to live in oblivion. It is the teasing glimpse of Samadhi, while living in a closed box, where everything that is yours is yours and everything else is another's. Yes, it is just a matter of perspective, but in it is a painful lesson: knowledge of a thing, no matter how divine, is not equivalent to the awareness of it. Maybe that is the meaning of Eden and the Apple.

Edited January 14 by Sash

[Sash]

Whatever blessings and good fortune I received in life, I received it with a selfish perspective. I received it from the perspective of "Who else has this? No one." instead of simply appreciating it for what it was. I realized that human defense mechanisms, as complex as they are, stem not only from moments of great trauma, but also from our resistances to great love.