how do i find direction in life?

the key is still to find ourselves, however which way we see this "self" of ours.

yes, there's the usual finding our passion, finding what we're good at, finding god.

but even before all that - we need to strip things out. what happens when we have nothing to lean on? all the things i'm proud of, all the sources of my ego, all the things i love, what happens when they're gone? (and lest we forget, they will all be gone, it's just a matter of time).

the more we strip away, even through thought experiments, the closer we might get to the essence of our being. people call it the void, core love, spiritual heart, it doesn't matter.

what we're looking for, is just the barest of what we deem as existence. all things originate from there. all sorts of directions in life are several levels above this barest level.

we have to take a good, honest look at this - this thing i call "i", without all the extra stuff around it.

only then, can our directions start to make any sense.

what do you want to do?

the more appropriate question for myself is, what is it that i would like to do, at the expense of the myriad of other things that i could do?

bets have to be placed. there will be things that get sacrificed.

as they say, we might be able to do anything in life, but definitely not everything in life.

once upon a time...

i could do this and that.

i achieved this and that.

i aspired to be this and that.

once upon a time, i sat around, reminiscing what i had done, achieved, and aspired to once upon a time.

path to where?

one of the key strengths of religion is to provide us with a pretty clear path, goal, and result.

- obey the commandments, the scriptures, the yamas and niyamas

- we'll be on our way to being saved, achieving enlightenment

- we'll be in good hands after we die, either in heaven, nirvana, or at least reborn as something nicer

what if there is no result? how does that change things? the "path" leads absolutely nowhere?

the result, i.e. the moment after death, is the one instance in our lives we aren't likely to be conscious of (at least in our present state). meanwhile, we can still tread the path and look at the flowers along the way.

so whichever path we're on - what happens when we find out that the goal is going to be taken away from us at the final moment?

does that still sound like the right path?

dreams and basic needs

let's for a moment assume we are among the lucky ones on the planet, with our current basic basic needs of food, water, shelter fulfilled. (no matter how smart or talented we are, if we were born in say zimbabwe, our chances of having basic basic needs are not so high).

our next goals become i) improving our basic basic needs to some appropriate level that satisfies our perceived basic needs, ii) securing a future, or some kind of guarantee that our perceived basic needs will continue to be fulfilled, and perhaps iii) rainy day money/resources for the yet-to-be-determined disaster.

then, we move on to satisfying our "actual" needs, nicely shaped by the 3,000 ads we are exposed to every day.

so how basic are our basic needs? what about our basic basic needs? how low can we go? what is the bare minimum? the bare bare minimum?

now, juxtaposing this against some particular dream we have (assuming for now it's not owning a ferrari or some equivalent). usually something we'd pursue when money was no longer an issue. there are two ways to satisfy the money problem. the first way is to make lots of it, to reach the mythical level of having "FU money". the second way is to find satisfaction in our true basic needs, as opposed to our "actual" needs. it is entirely possible that the former is easier for some of us.

if that dream requires large amounts of capital, then the added task is to find others who share your dream. if we truly are living on the bare minimum - we're actually giving ourselves a better chance of making that dream a reality.

but of course, we don't want our families to suffer. yes, we want the best for them. isn't it selfish to try to achieve whatever grand goal we have at the expense of their welfare, especially if you are the breadwinner of the family?

well, what about a conversation? what about their dreams? would you be willing to live on the bare minimum to fulfill their dreams?

respected by what kind of people?

that might be the more ultimate questions i need to understand myself.

perhaps what i desire, at the end of the day, is to feel relatively superior. to other people, to my old self, to whoever it might be. in many ways, some way, or at least one way. it might be hardwired in my brain, it might not.

money is a huge recurring theme in my life. if i make it big, from my own efforts (or at least perceived to be my own efforts), then i get respected by a certain group of people. by other people who wish they could be rich as well. by other similarly rich and powerful people, and you can hang with them to feel similarly rich and powerful. that way, you can feel constantly superior. in hong kong, money does get you respect. you get on magazine covers, you get interviewed on TV, you get placed on a nice pedestal.

now if i devote to the "saving the world" stuff. i will probably get some respect from the people who i manage to help somehow (and perhaps not, as many social workers will tell us), but these are people who never get covered by the news, never go to cool parties, and frankly, are not the vaunted "movers and shakers" of the world. sure, some of them "make it", but most of them have no interest in this. they don't have some burning desire to be the "best altruist of 2009" and get a plaque for it.

i am somewhat lucky in that i could potentially access the rich and powerful and hence become one of them, and get the respect that i'm this really smart and successful person that i crave. but, what is the point of this, remind me again?

i thought i'm going to be me

forrest gump was pretty confused when jenny asked him who he dreamt he would be in future. the rest of us, however, do have aspirations. some sort of potential, a level of something to be attained in our life times.

we see others and think, wow, he got that gig really with a bit of luck huh. what did she do to deserve that opportunity? how does it seem that i always get the tough rolls of dice?

yes, in trite feel-good stories, we are always told to cherish what we have, and to appreciate things we take for granted.

were our aspirations always so grand? did we already get to where we wanted? when do we stop feeding the monster? the monster, i'm told, gets less hungry with age, particularly as reality, or realization of reality, sets in.

can you remember the time when you told yourself you'd be so happy, for a long, long time, if you could just get that job? that girl? that yoga pose? finish that 10k run? see your kid graduate? can you wind back the clock? is it a weakness to be content with tiny victories and not aspire to greater ones?

changing ideals

what are your ideals? when does one start to go from "it would be totally awesome if i had a billion dollars and could spend the rest of my life in a beach house" to "it would be totally awesome if the world was a better place"?

i used to want to be a cashier. i thought my life would be great if i could sit around and collect money all day long.

in high school, i thought i could be a dipomat, to make use of my somewhat dubious cross-cultural background. then, i had some aspirations to be a filmmaker, thinking it would be glamorous and cool.

in college, i wanted to start an internet business, to make millions of dollars and change the world.

after working a few years, i thought i'd be more realistic and had the goal of heading up a sizable business at some point.

after learning from a yogi, i realized that all of this might not matter much at all.

yes, it would be really rather nice to have both a beach house and world peace. the problem with world peace is that the problem is too large for us mere mortals to comprehend. what about a school? for the cost of a beach house, you could build and run a school in rural china for decades.

so, would you rather build a school or would you rather have a beach house?

running in place

on the rows of treadmills, everyone's doing their thing. some are jogging at a leisurely pace, watching tv. others are sprinting away, earphones firmly plugged in, eyes on the prize. still others, are just walking, just gazing out of the windows.

we all are on the treadmill of life. we walk, run, sprint, but in the large scheme of things, we're not really going anywhere, and at the end, we always just get off.

there never is a right way or wrong way. but it does end, no matter how easy or hard your run is. so how do you want to run your life?