Who Are You and What Do You Want?
These are probably the two most difficult questions one will have to answer in life. You will not be obligated to answer them, but answering them to yourself will be the best thing you could do for yourself. You could keep on living without truly knowing yourself, but that would be a very meaningless, bland and painful life. You could go on and be swept by the random currents of nature and of the will of others, but that would be a life that falls way short of its potential.
The answer to who you are is not merely something that you could find in a book or from the mouth of a teacher or from some holy texts; although the answer might very well be there. You might even know it when you see it, but it’s very unlikely it will reach deep within you and make you truly understand; although this may happen. Most of the times it presents itself to you as a gift, after you ceased trying to find it.
Truth presents itself to those who have tired searching for it.
Some very wise man said this. You have to be eager, you have to want it more than ever and then you’ll get it. Or you’ll get it without even asking for it. Either way, it’s not you who can make it happen. It happens by itself. Moreover, it is not something that anyone can give you, it’s a journey on which you go alone.
“What do you want” is the very next question to ask yourself. This can get one stuck for quite some time, even after you can answer the first question. This is the one that kept me in place for no less than 2 years.
Without having a definite answer to this question you end up standing in one place or running around from left to right to right back from where you started. Why? Because you don’t know where you’re going.
The funny thing is that answering the first question gets you in the conundrum of not being able to answer the second one — only for a while, though — . This happens because when you get to know who you truly are, you realise that you are not even close to who you thought you were previously. And you based all of your life on that idea of who you were, including what you thought you desired.
So now that you found yourself anew, your old ambitions no longer work for you, your old life is no longer “all worked out”. But don’t worry! Nothing lasts forever; not even this. And you will learn to look inside yourself for your calling and you will respond accordingly.
