Philosophy

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If you struggle with the sense that you don’t know what to do with your life, you’re not the only one.

This feeling can stir up some pretty disturbing feelings of existential dread, anxiety, confusion, and fear that maybe “you’re wasting your life” or whittling away your time meaninglessly.

Having no idea what to do with our life can make us feel like failures and imposters pretending to have it all together externally while feeling internally messy.

But here’s the thing: I believe having no idea what to do with your life is actually a good thing when embraced with open arms.

Strangely, accepting your feelings of “I don’t know what to do with my life” actually leads to the solution itself and the path that is uniquely yours.

Why Having No Idea What to Do With Your Life is Actually a Good Thing

“People, chained to monotony, afraid to think, clinging to certainties … they live like ants. – Bela Lugosi

I’m going to make a wild statement here:

Certainty is the death of creativity, curiosity, and innovation.

We’re taught that we “should” know what to do with our lives. But why? Why should we know what to “do” with our lives?

Shouldn’t life be an adventure, rather than a steady monotonous march to our graves?

~~Aletheia Luna & Mateo Sol (Lonerwolf.com)

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“We are differently shaped. For the most malformed of us, it is not a shape of our own choosing. Except it is, and we are not malformed no matter what words we whisper inside our own hearts. It’s time to learn what these shapes we are can do instead of wishing to be diamonds. Even lumpy coal can be useful.” ~ Audrey Faye, Poet

Personally, I think coal is more useful than diamonds …. 

Be kind, always. 

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There is a beautiful Tibetan myth that helps us to accept our sadness as a threshold to all that is life-changing and lasting. This myth affirms that all spiritual warriors have a broken heart—alas, must have a broken heart—because it is only through the break that the wonder and mysteries of life can enter us. 

So what does it mean to be a spiritual warrior? It is far from being a soldier, but more the sincerity with which a soul faces itself in a daily way. It is this courage to be authentic that keeps us strong enough to withstand the heartbreak through which enlightenment can occur. And it is by honoring how life comes through us that we get the most out of living, not by keeping ourselves out of the way.  The goal is to mix our hands in the earth, not to stay clean.

quote from poet Mark Nepo

https://lonerwolf.com/spiritual-warrior/

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Rainer Maria Rilke

How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.

So you must not be frightened if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen; if a restiveness, like light and cloudshadows, passes over your hands and over all you do. You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall. Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any miseries, or any depressions? For after all, you do not know what work these conditions are doing inside you.

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For the animal shall not be measured by man.
In a world older and more complete than ours, they move
finished and complete, gifted with the extension of the
senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices
we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are
not underlings, they are other nations, caught with
ourselves in the net of life and time.

Henry Bestion – The Outermost House

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She knows she’ll get her butt kicked if she
chooses aliveness. Her light will blind others.
Her darkness will not let her fit in.  Her success
will provoke conflict.  Her ways of healing will
be judged. Her enemies will want her to
cower. And fear will do its best to take her
down. So she draws a circle around herself and
keeps opening up. Because aliveness is
freedom.  She’s embracing the risk to bypass
the ordinary. And she is exactly what the
world needs right now.

~ Tanya Markul: The She Book

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Don’t waste your time on anyone or anything
that makes you feel less than like yourself.  I’ve found
that one of the worst feelings in the world is
waking up to my soul whispering: stop being
an imposter, this isn’t  you.

So I return to the Trees, and that is where I see
my reflection and feel the scratchiness on my
shoulder blades as I grow back my wings.

I let go of who I was to dare and discover who
I am in the freedom of this moment, and just
like the wind, I know I’ll change again, but
gasp with excitement at the mere thought of
soaring in the breath of now.

RIP, old self. You Served A Great Purpose.
~ Tanya Markul (The She Book)