Is There Something more in Life?
How does one ever imagined that a crawling caterpillar who yearns to be free will one day transform so unbelievably into a beautiful butterfly and take flight through the world towards their destiny?
The caterpillar might have never known its capabilities but when the time is right, it will take its quantum leap and transform beyond its wildest dreams.
There really are miracles in the world.
There comes a point in one’s life when we start to wonder if there is something more in life. All those struggles and weariness of the roles that we play, are they what we really want?
“Everybody has a secret world inside of them. I mean everybody. All of the people in the whole world, I mean everybody — no matter how dull and boring they are on the outside. Inside them they’ve all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds… Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands, maybe.”
Neil Gaiman The Sandman, Vol. 5: A Game of You
How do we ever find out what we really want and what is it that we are meant to do in our lives? Is there such a thing called life purpose? Does everyone have a Dharma which is the essential nature of one’s character that is meant to fulfill his or her destiny in accordance to the flow of the universe?
When we were young, we felt that we have all the time in the world. At mid-life, everything seems to change. The clock is ticking and suddenly we realized that this one finite life is waiting for no one. It feels a little weird when we reach the mid-point of our lives. Elders that we once knew started to pass on and new lives begin in the form of the many newborns that surrounds us. We are like stuck in the middle of this transitional phrase, for having experienced childhood and slowly heading towards the inevitable path of old age and ultimately death.
It is said that you are already dying the day you are born and sadly most people do not realize this and try to live fully in each moment. If we are not living fully, we are dying slowly.
One day I woke up to a pretty stressed and hectic lifestyle, life became quite meaningless. Just like most people I knew at that time, I tried really hard to work for survival and to fulfill the roles and responsibilities of society and family. Through the conditioned path that I was taught, I incurred heavy expenses and got my degree pretty late in life. I was full of hope until I realized that spending lots of money on education for more than twenty over years of your life doesn’t guarantee you a successful living for the rest of your life, neither did it bring much happiness.
What’s worse is that those years that I have spent, I cannot get it back. Life happens to be a one way ticket, we can only spend it but we cannot keep it.
I realized quite late that most of the decisions I made in the past wasn’t even consciously made by me. I was ignorant and unconscious, I based my life choices mostly from the influences of family, friends, news, society and education and so I chased after the wages, I chased after survival, I chased after success climbing the corporate ladder, I chased after being a good man in the eyes of others, all in the hopes of achieving this elusive thing called happiness.
Sadly most of the choices I made was a fool’s choice because people’s opinion of you changes so fast it is impossible to catch up. There is just so many ways to screw up in the world if you are just trying to fulfill someone else purpose without first understanding your own.
I went a full circle and that morning when I woke up several years ago, I decided to forgo everything I knew. I decided to drop all my beliefs and realized how difficult and how much work it is to unlearn the things we think we knew. The realization that I do not know anything kept me open to life itself and starting from that blank state, my life went through tremendous changes.
I began to restructure my life and it felt like I am studying for the first time, subjects that formed the foundations of being human, subjects that should have preceded everything in my education before I am well equipped to enjoy all that life has to offer.
The world changes when you learn to see with an unclouded set of eyes and that clarity is priceless.
The shift wasn’t easy and I have lost much through the process of those changes. I have lost people whom I cared about in my life, I have lost certain luxuries that I used to enjoy, I have lost the means of earning a stable income, and the toughest one is to lose the ego, the individuality that I believed to be myself. In spite of all these losses, I have gained a lot more in return.
For the first time in my life, I felt peace, love and stability.
I began to feel so alive.
It feels like I am experiencing once again, the wonder and awe for life since childhood.
The world changes when you learn to see with an unclouded set of eyes and that clarity is priceless. It is this priceless gift that I would like to share with you in the hopes that you will once again find your own wonders in life.
If, and that is if you are ready and courageous enough to live the world you have within yourself.
With that, I welcome you to DLifeJourney.