A man who taught me to discover a great deal about myself, seemed to like it whenever I became confused about something. Let’s face it, we hate it when this confusion thing happens because we lost that comfortable certainty of knowing the answer - but actually, when we really think about it - from this state, just might emerge something new and useful.
We are taught from birth to seek the answers to stuff. When we absorb all these well-meaning lies, and we finally feel we know the answer, our minds close like a steel trap and are just as hard to open again.
Is it so with the answer to what we should do with our lives? Are we so obsessed with finding an answer that we forget to enjoy the calculation process?
Im going to wish you some confusion as you read this now.
Once upon a time, a Zen monk asked his master, “How do I achieve my real purpose in life - how can I find enlightenment?” Without a word, the master picked up some broken ceramic tile and began to polish it against a stone. The young monk was bewildered and asked “What are you doing?” The reply came, “Making a mirror.”“But its impossible to make a mirror from a piece of old tile” protested the young monk.
“Well, achieving enlightenment is like polishing this broken tile” replied the master.
Many of us struggle with what should be our purpose but is that really the best question to ask anyway?
Many years ago I saw wind surfers at play on the beautiful Lake Silvaplana above St Moritz in Switzerland. At Silvaplana, the famous Maloja Wind creates ideal conditions every day for expert and advanced windsurfers. They made it look effortless as they rode the wind and waves and leaped high into the air. We would definitely say that this was pretty “cool.”
Having been totally inspired by the setting and what I saw, I signed up for training and of course found it to be very difficult. Let’s just say there was a serious mismatch between my personal vision of what I would be doing and what I actually discovered.
I went into training with some grand expectations and discovered very quickly that windsurfing sure wasn’t going to be easy. It was actually quite painful and full of fear. After five minutes my face was bleeding from mast blows to the face. After fifteen minutes more I discovered how hard it was to get out of the way of the ferry boats and swim in a wetsuit. I no longer saw the beautiful setting as I gave myself up to self-obsessed struggle.
You might guess how the story ends. Weighing up the prospective pain of further practice and the bitter disappointment of my expectations being crushed, I was led to a simple conclusion - I need to do something else. I was squashed both by my preconceptions of what to expect and the limitations I saw in myself. It was tough to accept. For most of my life I had been so competitive that I would never even play a game that I didn’t believe I could win. It made it so much harder to fail.
Recognise this? - Limitations and assumptions are made up in the head and broken down so easily in the sharp face of reality. After a day of trying - (battle cry of the wimp “I’ll try!”) I told my instructor I wasn’t coming back for the second day.
I suspect he had heard it all before.
He simply said, “But I thought you wanted to ride with the wind?”
Now I know two young women. Talented, beautiful and with much to be grateful for. They are saying much the same thing right now..
“So - I figured out what I don't want to do with my life (very long and ever growing list), but can't figure out what i DO want to do!!”
Rather than this being an issue to cause concern, I see this as cause for personal celebration. It suggests there is search and discovery - it suggests “riding with the wind.” It suggests a willingness to play the game of life and try some things.
Less usefully, this expression suggests that somehow finally discovering what you want to do is a useful goal in itself. This view is something I just don’t see.
Throughout history, humans have sought personal meaning in their lives. Joseph Campbell pointed to how each life can be seen as a journey; a hero’s journey with definite stages identified in a Monomyth that crosses the world’s cultures.
I think it was also Joseph Campbell who pointed to the fact that life was a bit like going to the cinema and finding that when you arrive the movie is already playing. So you watch for quite a long time before you start to get a feel for the plot. Then just as you start to get comfortable, and before you see how the movie ends, someone taps you on the shoulder and tells you it’s time to leave.
Such thought exercises can be helpful to reflect on “where we are” but as these are just exercises of the mind, the danger is that we forget to take action. Life is not just an intellectual puzzle. Surely when we are doing it right we are engaging our mind, body and spirit.
In some cultures and religions it might be believed that our life purpose is found in an “inner journey” and that we should not get attached to the trappings of life. I don’t know about you but I thoroughly enjoy the trappings of life and I want to play with them - why not?
I wont make the mistake though of believing that I can find my purpose or deep satisfaction in material things and certainly not just through their possession. They are just things to play with on the way. Life satisfaction lies after all in our deepest feelings and only in the present moment which Eckhart Tolle describes as “all we ever have”. Too many of us rarely accept the present moment. We struggle to break free of the past that made us what we fear we are - that which we cannot change - and of course we fret about the future which is only ever a fantasy.
How many of us are choosing to be stuck with jobs, situations, people and circumstances that we don’t like? For decades - for a whole lifetime? Nothing seems to be attractive enough, or easy enough for us to break from our expectations and limiting beliefs and we dream instead of “living our lives on purpose” or “finding ourselves”. We might allow ourselves this dream of a different reality but almost in the same breath we remind ourselves to “get real,” to just accept our responsibilities and our all too real limitations.
Lucky ones find a way and discover that the joy of life is discovered in the journey. Nothing goes completely to plan but joy lies too in the contrast.
I used to think that life should be a struggle. It’s because of who my parents and grandparents were. They looked at their circumstances and saw they were hard and that shaped their beliefs and inevitably mine, about how life is supposed to be. I believed for a long time that work needed to be hard and that was what life brought to me. The problem with that belief was that any and every success that came along just felt “hollow” and lacking. We all need to find more useful beliefs and create the future history of our lives in ways that inspire us rather than hold us back. Why postpone satisfaction with life for some future time?
The thing is, our primary purpose in life is just to be happy. If nothing else it’s a powerful and useful belief. Magical things can come from this. We know if we are living our life on purpose by the way we feel not by how we label it. It is our life’s compass. There is no selfishness in this because ultimately we can only change the world by starting with ourselves. It can be a lifetimes work to learn to be happy irrespective of our life’s circumstances but its a very powerful practice to undertake.
So how should we live?
Well we should choose to ride with the wind - take some action. Do some cool stuff! Appreciate it in the moment just for what it is! Just for today polish the tile and don’t worry that you haven’t got a mirror yet.
Sometimes we will fall but we have to keep going; accept our starting point gratefully because wherever we start from we can know that its not going to be the end point. Its just a temporary halt in proceedings and we can easily choose to see the attractions that lie ahead.
In windsurfing we take note of the winds and learn to work with them. As we have developed our skills we can still go out when the wind is strong and lesser mortals return to shore. So it is with our life when we choose to just continue to play the game. Pay attention. When we have some (any) forward movement it is much easier to change direction. If we don't like where we find ourselves that momentum means we quickly find ourselves in a better place.
And we must choose to be happy now - the state - the feelings - that surface in us will reveal to us the way in life. Sometimes we need to just keep “polishing the tile” while we choose to be happy. It’s practicing life without expectations. With a knowing that what emerges for us is never with limitation.
The idea of our purpose is just that - an idea - something the human mind reads into certain forms of movement. When we become conscious of, or deliberately search for, any purpose in our movements through life we are no longer free. To be free actually implies purposelessness.
Think about this.
When purpose is too much in evidence, for example, in a work of (so called) art, actually art is no longer there; it becomes a machine or an advertisement. When art is like a machine we understand it and there is no longer mystery there. Beauty will have run away, the creation of those ugly human hands becomes altogether too visible. Suchness in art lies in its artlessness, that is purposelessness. In this, Nature is a perfect specimen of art in as much as there is no visible purpose in the waves rolling on from the beginning-less past in the ocean or in a mountain standing pure and high against the sky.
Do you really need purpose to be so apparent in your life or do you wish to be an evolving work of art? Im glad you’re confused.