What is our purpose in life? Today’s 99 Million Dollar Question right?!
I’ve been working with this questions quite intimately these past months here in Bali land. Knowing for a long time there is much more to living life than just hitting the daily grind in exchange for an income.
I know this – but such is life – continuing to learn lessons, plugging along & asking life purpose reflection questions.
Each question has created an opportunity, a stepping stone to the next. Each stepping stone has requested courage & fear acknowledgement. But here’s the thing, they ARE stepping stones. We are never given what we cannot handle, and so we get to choose in each moment whether we continue with what we know, or step into that which we don’t.
Bali was and continues to be a gamble.
I have no idea what I’m doing & showing up for on a day to day basis, but I do, because sitting here in my life, I cannot & will not go backwards.
If I ‘went back’, this might look like returning to Australia or maybe New Zealand, getting a J.O.B in exchange for my life hours and a small wage in exchange for such un-priceable value. I will not do it. (Well – it doesn’t feel like my here & now calling. Although I have learnt to be open and step into what is needed in each moment.)
The Silent Retreat was tough. It was an inner boot camp of looking at fears, demons, and a time out & deconstruction of everything I knew to be true. The living paradigm of J.O.B working. Compartmentalizing life. It has since spat me out, in which I am SO grateful for. Day by day, now some 10 days on or so, life continues to show up for me because I am choosing to show up for it. I am in the hands of something far greater that has me in it’s arms.
How am I sustaining myself?
Friends, more friends, small savings & trust.
Do I know what I’m doing tomorrow?
Hell No!
Am I happy & excited?
Hell YES!
Do I get to live my life on my terms?
HELL YES!
Am I safe? A roof over my head & food to eat?
Everyday!
This is life!
This is living!
My dear chicken friend reminded me last week. There is no separation between work & play. There is only life. We shouldn’t have to invest in one to have the other. They shouldn’t need to be mutually exclusive things.
Life is life. It was given to us as our birthright to enjoy, explore, learn & play. Not to live by rules & patterning passed down from generation to generation. But the sad thing is, unless you don’t start to question, you will never learn any different, as we only know what we know. If we knew what we didn’t know, there would still be more that we didn’t know. And so on & so on, x’s infinity! Where does the mind go with the limitlessness of that!?
I’m reading the book “Cashflow Quadrant by Robert T Kiyosaki” right now, and a passage he shares within it is;
“We all know people who make a lot of money, but hate their work. We also know people who do not make a lot of money and hate their work. And we all know people who just work for money. A classmate of mine realized he did not want to spend his life at sea. Rather than sail for the rest of his life, he went to law school after graduation, spending three more years becoming a lawyer and entering private practice in the Self Employed Quadrant.
He died in his early fifties. He had become a very successful, unhappy lawyer. Like me, he had two professions by the time he was 26. Although he hated being a lawyer, he continued being a lawyer because he had a family, kids, a mortgage, and bills to pay.
A year before he died, I met him at a class reunion in New York. He was a bitter man.
“All I do is sweep up behind rich guys like you. They pay me nothing. I hate what I do and who I work for.”
“Why don’t you do something else?” I asked.
“I can’t afford to stop working. My first child is entering college.”
he died of a heart attack before she graduated.
he made a lot of money via his professional training, but he was emotionally angry, spiritually dead, and soon his body followed.”
Whilst this story is extreme, doesn’t it hit hard? I mean, I’m sure we know people in our sphere’s like this right? Living the daily grind, surviving not thriving.
There is no blame or finger pointing here. This situation is what it is because we know no different, but is merely an opportunity to be open to reflect on HOW we could live differently? What would I really like to enjoy in my world? It can be a big question that brings forth a blank canvas. I know it did for me for a long time, I’ve only known that the old didn’t fit and I needed to move towards something new , un-created & unwritten.
Question with me, create, play & explore.
