This is not an “if I can do it, you can do it too” story. (Part two)

This is a reality check.
Are you living a whole-hearted life?
Do you spend more time like this?

                             Or like this?

When was the last time you sat down alone in a quiet room and asked yourself "what matters most?"

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Human brains love certainty. Our brains are skilled categorization machines, constantly functioning to find patterns, trends, organize information and slot it into structured memories ready for recall to identify new information at the slightest chance. This make humans seek certainty (eg: assurance, poise, firmness, confidence, control) where ever we can find it as if it's a survival need.

If there is one thing I have learned to become CERTAIN of in my life, it is ONLY this: I have no fricking clue about anything, uncertainty is everywhere.

Everything I think I can’t do, I eventually learn that I actually can do it. Everything I think I can do, I eventually learn that I can’t actually do it as well as I thought. Everything I don’t want that I think I am successfully avoiding will chase me around as I try to escape it.  Everything I do want and I’m trying to grab a hold of will just run away from me as I try to reach for it. And everything I think I know can be erased within seconds, proving that I actually know nothing at all.

Life, earth, the universe, me (both outside and inside), is constantly in flux.

Knowing only for certain that nothing is certain at all has given me a great deal of headaches in my life and spilled a great many tears keeping me awake at night. It affects how I interact with people and how I portray myself to the world. Because it’s the juxtaposition between seeking certainty and losing certainty that plagues most human minds (mine included!) and leaves our thoughts in a perpetual state of chaos trying to find answers to the age old  “what do you want to do with your life” kind of questions that haunt us from childhood.

Unfortunately, many people stay stuck on this Ferris wheel ride of seeking certainty and losing certainty throughout their lives. And this happens because they don’t detach themselves from their life experiences to get into that abstract zone where who you are as a human being (your heart), must be teased apart from who you are as a cultural mortal (your head). Put in these anthropological terms, it sounds rather complex. But it doesn’t have to be. Because it’s really just about figuring out the way to make: what you think, what you say, and what you do, all line up.

What it all boils down to is: how you make sense of your own life.

How the heck people with the least familiarity with life (children, teenagers, young adults) are supposed to be able to answer the “predetermined/planned destiny” type questions for their inquisitors on such limited life experience to even begin to make sense of their own lives, baffles me, because it’s been impossible for me to do. But our culture currently thrives on this concept of "the power of youth." And what concerns me the most is, not that we ask these questions so early in life and repeat them often, not at all. But it’s that we expect answers, real answers, sensible answers, to lay the best made plans so early on, which means by the time we grow up and do gain some experience to start making sense of life, we’ve been spinning on our Ferris wheels going up (finding happiness) and down (losing happiness), seeking certainty and losing certainty, for so long that we no longer realize: it’s just a ride. We begin to believe we are just like Ferris wheels spinning out of control; that it’s my fault I can’t make this plan work, or I can’t be who they expect me to be, or who they want me to be, or that really I’m not good enough, or I’m not happy with where this is going, or I’m not fulfilled even though I followed all the rules, or I need more to make it perfect, or it could it happen again and I have to stop it, or that no one understands my “unique” and “individual” ways etc. etc.

Here’s the “catch 22” that I have come to believe in: you are the Ferris wheel itself and the force that powers the ride. And maybe that is the function of life - you are your life experiences and your life experiences are you; you create them, maintain them, ride them, drive them, circle back around and do it over again and again, all for the purpose of getting to the point where you can distinguish between the ride itself and the power supply, to find compassion or peace or happiness or a purpose-driven life or whatever you want to call it…. In other words, the purpose of the ride, and it’s inherent dualism, is to get you into the zone you need to be in, to be able to make sense of your own life and answer those questions “what do I want to do with my life?” and “what matters most?"

So I left my comfortable, cushy, stable life in Canada, as a young adult with a solid plan to fulfill my destiny. Thinking I already knew everything there was to know about everything (as most kids foolishly do), I set forth with a solid foundation to jump off of: people are good and I am strong (so I shouldn’t be scared), be polite, be generous with others, be tolerant of differences (we are all the same inside), follow the rules, be the best I can be, I am smart and know everything already, Canadians are #1.

And was prompty terrified by the sound of my bubble bursting when I hit the ground running.

As Howard Thurman once wrote: “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

It’s been a long mostly unpleasant journey thus far, which may seem like a sour statement to make about my life outside of Canada, but as you will see, it is not. It’s actually the most important and sweetest statement I could probably make about what it’s been like to live outside of my established and steady life at home where I belong, because it’s the most real. And it’s the most sincere (humble with a whole lotta context of significance). Because the year I left Canada marks the beginning of the process of me coming alive. And that process was initiated when everything I thought I knew and was comfortable with, was turned upside down and en epic battle of past and future began colliding in my head as I struggled to find better answers to the question "what do I want to do with my life"...

If my first answers that got me started on this exploration were only 1) be Dr. Prime, and 2) I like animals more than people. What comes next?

I made my next list of things to do when I was around 15 years old and modified it again when I was 21…. (to be continued in part 3 "This is not an 'if I can do it, you can do it too' story.)