Why do I exist? Why do I live the way I live? If I didn't need to make money to get my needs met how would my daily life change? What would I stop doing and what would I do more of? Do I think something else would rise up to take the place of money? What would it be and what would it be used for?

If there was a thread I could pull to untangle my life, which one would it be? Self? Work? Study? Family? Health? All of the above? I look at what the pain points are in my life. What am I searching for? What do I feel I need? What do I lack? Why and where do I get the feeling that I am not enough, that there is something *more*?

Understanding there are no answers to life is disconcerting. The only answers that exist lead to where others have already gone, which may be the one direction I don't want to go on. If I could ask anyone for the secret of life... who would I trust to tell me an amazingly true and profound answer? What they are doing differently with their life? Add a bit of that. And a bit of this. And make up the recipe for life as I go.

I am lonely because I feel that I am separate from people. I can accept that I am separate and learn to live with it, or I can accept that I am not separate and could be doing something different. Neither option is easy. Being lonely, for me, is about sensing that my alone-ness is wrong and should be solved or cured. What if I celebrated it instead? Food for thought.

Better is tricky. We can all improve, though for many of us, better is a non- existent future tense that never arrives. Better becomes the carrot permanently dangled in front of me. Recognizing when I'm the one that is setting up these milestones that always get pushed back gets me into a state of accepting -what is- as perfectly OK. I am a work in progress, my worth is not determined by the end product but by the process. I am enough.

Resist. The sense of urgency comes to me when it is anxiety speaking instead of calm or peace. There is nothing I can do NOW to change how I feel. I want to change it because I don't want to feel whatever it is that I am feeling. I give in to the feeling. To the deepest version of it that I can access. I let myself sink into it deeply and let it churn through me and spit me out the other side. With practice, it takes me a couple of minutes of deep feeling before it passes. I resist making up a story to go with it, thoughts can feed into it, and I only need for it to pass through and bring up what it needs.

I don't feel I can achieve what I want, so I make it so that I have a perfectly reasonable excuse for why I didn't get there. Can't lose if I don't play the game. The opposite is true as well: If I participate in everything, then I can't focus on that which I really want. I push myself out of these comfort zones bit by bit; I test the waters before jumping in. Deciding the water is too deep and dark for me to jump into is also perfectly acceptable, I can always choose different the next time. I make it my point not to beat myself up for it. Being aware is one step closer to stop calling it self-sabotage and call it "I am protecting myself from something and is it still a risk for me?"

What do I run away from? What situations do I avoid and why do I avoid them? If I avoid situations where I can be hurt emotionally, is it a rational or irrational fear? How can I prepare myself for this eventuality? If I avoid situations where I can be hurt physically, why don't I find myself questioning it? My fears show me the areas of my life where I still have shadows. The point is not to dispel my shadows, just acknowledge and understand they exist. Like in the space under a large tree in a courtyard, it can be the perfect comfort on a sunny day, no need to cut off the tree because the shadow in the dark makes me shiver.

The cures I choose for my problems point towards that which I want instead. If I go into fantasies and dreams of a better life, building a better life in reality is a great place to start. If I want to stop thinking, then I want a world where my mind is at peace. If I distract myself with other people's problems, I have a desire to help. If I want to chase pleasure, then is my day to day existence filled with duty and little rewards, maybe I need to let in more joy in. Our bodies know what we want, even when our minds may not yet understand.

Reality does not work under theoretical constraints. There are no reasons why, there are only ways in which I can face that which I go through, whether or not I can explain how or why. I now ask myself what I can learn from whatever is happening. As bad as I have it, there are many others who have it better and many others who have it worse, and there is not one scale that we can measure people's hurt. It just is. The lottery of life. What can I make of this situation, how can I apply what I learned to the rest of my life? How can I honor what is happening and what tools can I use to help me through?

Being human requires experiencing all emotions. If I divide good vs bad emotions, then I will try to get all the good ones in, and then I will have to experience all the bad ones at once as well. This system is reflected in bipolar humans. However, I believe that if I allowed myself to grow and exist as humans should, my good and bad would be balanced, and I would be able to roll with the emotions and feelings and not have them swamp me. Like a dam on a river, if I repress emotions, they will come spilling out.
Society established in regions with seasons believes that humans should also have seasons. However, there are many cultures that have existed without seasons... How were they meant to balance out the good and bad? I need to look at my circadian rhythm and establish what sort of rhythm I will need to follow and then go and find that environment for myself.

We are not meant to continue working on ourselves with no rest. However, the fear of missing out on opportunities can push us to want to overexert ourselves, or to do it despite wishing desperately to stop and let ourselves enjoy our progress. Rest is sacred, and opportunities that arrive when we are not ready to receive them, are not opportunities meant for us, there will always be someone that will be able and willing to take the burden of those opportunities, and when we are ready, we will see new ones that flow with who we have become. Rest from expectations, especially from those others have of you, or those that you carry based on what you believe you should be doing, vs. what you feel inside is meant for you to be doing now.

When you know who you are, you can face mistakes and barriers on your path with equanimity, or at least, acceptance. Being a true, authentic soul isn't convenient, but it is necessary. There are challenges in trying to go against the flow of culture, which doesn't usually benefit from those who would shake up the system that profits it, and one of those is that the system will try to push you back onto a certain path where it believes you'd fit better. Understand yourself, so you can also flow with this. Sometimes, we can get back on segments of a path that go towards what we need, with the understanding that we can choose to get off the path at a later point, or we can be in the path to test it again for size and comfort. What didn't fit us once, might fit us again, or we may reaffirm that stepping out of a situation was the right choice.

What makes you wake up and want to DO something? Pursue your curiosity as it strikes and as little or as much as feels interesting. The energy we invest in correcting and propping up areas that we feel are weaker in us, can be best invested in cultivating our interests and passions, the things that make our body and soul feel engaged. The pursuit of where we thrive is a worthwhile one, especially when it intersects with the other areas of our lives that we have identified as things that we wish to do. A combination of a need to do with a wish to do is the path to working with intrinsic satisfaction.