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I’ve done a lot of soul-searching lately.
I think I’m where I want to be in life, but how can I know for sure?
There’s no fool-proof life barometer that can tell me if my actions are the ones my ideal, authentic self should be taking.
What I do know is that I have to keep moving. I need to keep doing things that bring me joy — and then hold out hope that that’s good enough.
Pursuing joy is not the same as doing joyful activities.
What I mean by this is that I can’t go into an activity, or an event, or a project with the end goal of “joy.” It just won’t work that way.
I have to discard the notion that I have any control of the outcome and pursue my life as wholeheartedly as possible — that is, I have to put my “whole heart” into what I’m doing.
I figure this is my best shot at finding joy in the process.
Notice I said, “in the process.” This is the only place I’ve ever found joy.
I can’t buy joy. I can’t Google it and bask in the digital secretions of the joyful search results. I have to fully and presently live my life and notice the joy that emanates from the process.
So I am going to continue to write. I’m going to continue to work in the mental health field.
After graduating from grad school with a social work degree in May, it sure would be an embarrassment and a waste of money if I discovered that I no longer wanted to work in mental health.
But that wouldn’t have happened, and it wouldn’t have happened because I put in the time and the effort to find myself before I made the substantial monetary investment.
I pursued lots of different activities that I thought would bring me joy, and then I stuck with the ones that actually did. The result was a path in life that defied the perfectly crafted track I had concocted when I was younger and incredibly naive.
I remember being 21 and writing about my “ten-year plan” in a notebook.
Hah! What a joke. Nothing from that ten-year plan has come true, and I’m grateful for that.
I’ve always been a bit of a perfectionist, and I used that tendency to craft my future. Imagine my surprise when, as the years went by, my meticulous planning didn’t lead to joy.
For me, when I’m meticulously planning my life, I’m forgetting to live my life.
I’m searching for safety. I’m wrapping my life in mental moats to protect my body from harm. The protective edifices of my creation are outgrowths of an anxious mind. They are not fully present living.
In the moment is where I see what’s before me. It’s where I gauge how I feel. It’s where I use what I feel to make my next move. It’s where I love and play and hope and dream and smile and grimace and achieve whatever I am supposed to achieve.
And the more I practice living in the moment, the more I actually live in the moment — and the more I learn how to flow with my life as authentically as possible.
Maybe I’ll achieve great things. Maybe I won’t.
In the end, I don’t think that matters. I think it’s the experience that counts, and I’m trying to collect as many rich and varied experiences as I can.
It’s as if the purpose of it all is to learn to live life backwards. I thought I knew what I was doing when I was younger; now I’m not sure I know much of anything at all.
It’s a good place to be.
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This post was originally published on Medium.com and is republished with the author’s permission.
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Photo courtesy of the author.
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