A COLLABORATION: The HUMAN EXPERIENCE

It’s hard to express the process of self-discovery in a manageable way, but here I go anyway. I intend to share, even if the meaning is confounding.

There are nights when I lie resting in bed, pondering my reality. I can actualize the tools I’ve used to protect myself as I was growing up, and how these same tools, once used for protection, now hinder my growth as an adult. I created a state of dissociation to protect myself from uncomfortable situations I had no control over—things that made me uncomfortable. Growing up, we hope to rely on our family for comfort and protection, to be put at ease by the nature of our surroundings. But when that was not the case, I turned inward to protect myself through emotional dismissal and separation from whatever caused discomfort.

I am a very thorough-minded person, and what I have realized is that when I don’t have the details or plans for something, I shut off. I dissociate from my urges to fully understand and just go along with my tasks.

The concept that has come to me is that my talents for thoroughness, organization, research, execution, and my desire for efficiency were dismissed to protect and comfort myself from a young age from chaos, misunderstanding, and turmoil I could not and did not know how to change. In doing so, I grew to fear my passions and dissociate from the urges to understand.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that true passion can hide in plain sight, in the fear and discomfort of our daily lives. Acknowledge and explore your anxieties, triggers, and annoyances. Try to understand the things that drain your energy and the things that give you energy. Who knows, you might be running from the exact life you would love, hiding behind the movement that drains your life force.

As everyone has their individual talents and passions, we, as a collective race, also have an innate desire to grow and improve. This human desire to be more can be obscured by the need to protect ourselves and be comfortable. It can also be camouflaged as the desire to be liked or to fit in. This tendency to mask our individual growth in favor of others’ approval will take us far off the path of our true selves, as we were meant to be. Our individual forces and strengths, the very essence of our souls, are all part of something bigger.

Just as we all have given talents and passions, we also have abilities we are not so good at or have no desire to pursue. These abilities, and whatever hinders us from mastering them, are not the mission of life. They exist because there is someone else who loves them and is energized by doing them. The things that drain your energy are not something to obsess over. While working on abilities we don’t naturally enjoy can feel exciting—such as facing fears and overcoming adversity—our true power lies in that which we have a natural knack for and are passionate about.

As I rant about life and existence, just know life is everything and nothing at the same time, it can have a divine purpose and be totally and completely meaningless and everything in between, life is about perspective. Life is good and evil, life is selfless and greedy, life is confusing and contradicting, life is ebb and flow. Life is natural. You hold all the power to make life exactly what is it to you.