The Search for Meaning

A friend recently told me that now that she has all of the money she needs, and doesn't really need to work anymore, and she now finds herself struggling to find meaning in anything that she can do.  She told me that she didn't expect much sympathy, as this problem is not one that really plucks at most people's heart strings, but I knew EXACTLY what she was talking about.  A year after I moved to Costa, I felt the exact same thing.  While I didn't have much money, the world was open to me.  I could do anything at all.  And I was stuck.  What on Earth would be meaningful?  There seemed to be no reason to make one choice over another.

I asked myself if really I thought I might just move back to the States, get a job, and be just like everyone else in the world.  Disgusted with the thought, I packed my bags, and here I am. Just like everyone else around me.  Meaningless.

But last week, I realized something.  Six years ago, just post-Hoffman, I experienced a few months of clarity.  Openness to the world.  Happiness.  Love.  Freedom.  Detachment.  I've described it in detail, I'm sure.  But what I realized last week is that in that time of my life when I felt most me, most alive, most in touch with the universe, I didn't concern myself with meaning. 

And then it hit me.  When you are you - when you allow yourself to let God/the light/the Holy Spirit/your spirit drive you and all of your programming/patterns/habits/pain body are stripped away, you become meaningful.   You don't have to think about what you can do that would be meaningful, because what you do is meaningful.  Whatever it is.  At that point, trying to determine the purpose of your actions or of your being is, in fact, meaningless. 

And so I again set on my life's pursuit.  I'm no longer convinced it is to find the middle way.  It is to just be me.  At any cost. 

But to find the courage to make that leap...

I am again feeling that you can't ease into it.  You must make that leap.  But where that strength comes from...