Why Am I Here?

Last New Year, and the year prior, I asked for “top three stressful thoughts” you were experiencing, if you felt like writing them down.

This popped into my mind as I drove for several hours looking out at a road lined with everything unusual and strange.

As I stared out the window of the van in which I was a back seat passenger, my mind was full of questions like “I wonder why there is a temple every few hundred feet along the road? I wonder why everyone is flying kites? I wonder where those men are taking that gigantic dead pig that they’re trying to get through a narrow doorway? I wonder what’s in the lined up yellow glass bottles near every store?”

Some questions I asked the driver, who was native to this place (he pointed out the home of his grandmother as we sped by) but more questions were filling my brain than could be asked….at least this was another thought, that I really couldn’t ask EVERYTHING.

It’s weird but the mind appears to be filled and flowing with QUESTIONS. About everything it doesn’t quite understand.

Then my husband, over lunch, innocently asked about plans and ideas for tomorrow…and the conversation moved into thoughts about the days ahead here on Bali.

Which led me to thinking later, in the car again, about the top things I wanted to see while here that I had heard about in the past, and how I wanted to feel once I departed….which led me to reflecting on what I came here to see, do, think, feel, or explore….

Which reminded me of one of the Top Three Stressful Thoughts I had heard about from people back at the New Year.

One of the top three stressful thoughts?

“Why Am I Here?”

This can sometimes be a fun or neutral-feeling question….and it can tip over into stressful really quickly, the way the speedy mind seeks for clear answers and demands them NOW.

Suddenly, I could relate. I wondered why I was here in Indonesia, on the island of Bali? I mean, really?

Why am I here? What’s my purpose? What am I doing? What should I do next? Where is this heading? What’s the reason for my existence?

Sometimes….these kinds of thoughts enter when on a journey far, far away from home.

What the heck am I doing HERE?

There’s a little stressy thought as the mind becomes ready to derail anything you could possibly answer that question with…because nothing will be a good enough answer, it thinks.

Left up to the mind to answer that question, there really won’t be any solid satisfaction…. because IT DOESN’T KNOW!

The wise-man answers to these WHY questions say things like, “you are here to live, you are here to love, you are here to be!” 

But! There has to be a better, more interesting, more elaborate, detailed, fascinating, adventurous, personal reason to why I’m here…more unique perhaps, something that makes me special?

And then, do you notice the feelings within, when considering WHY YOU ARE HERE become sort of sparked? Maybe frustrated? Grabby? Demanding? Pushy? Wanting?

I NEED TO KNOW!

I need to know why I’m here, why I exist, why I’m with that person, why that upsetting thing happened, why I’m visiting this place, why I live here, why I travel there, why I got sick, why I suffer, or what my purpose is!

Stop! Hold your horses!

Inquire. Is that true that I need to know why I’m here?

YES! I MUST find my answer! I will achieve, conquer, gain, and realize my goal…or… something! I need to understand! I need to have magical events occur! I need to find something! I want to make a discovery! I want to get this!

Can I absolutely know that this is true?

When I believe the thoughts that I need to know WHY and WHAT FOR then I notice I get all charged up (at best) and get furious or depressed (at worst).

Who would I be without the thought that I need to know what my life is for and why I’m here and what to do next?

What if I really unhitched from that belief and loosened the grip, let it go altogether, just let everything be the way it is, including me and my purpose (or lack of it)?

I turn that thought around, and in this day, here, I see how I do not need to know why anything is the way it is.

I am still alive, I am still here (so far), I am taking in my environment…I see, hear, touch, taste, smell, feel, think….rest, sit, watch, wonder, observe.

I’m still at this moment, apparently, seeing a full moon set through a very thick jungle forest, hearing infinite sounds and hoots and buzzes and around me.

I found out everyone here builds a temple in front of their family home, people fly kites when they harvest the rice, I have no idea where they were taking the pig but my guess is they will eat it, and the pretty glass bottles everywhere are full of petrol.

Noticing the mind, allowing it also to be here…thinking, assessing, commenting, feeling the feeling of not knowing what basic things are for, not knowing what anything is for.

Mind here too, present and busy and not needing to know anything definitive…it doesn’t need to know, because it clearly doesn’t, and life goes on.

Here I am visiting the inner land of I Do Not Know What Anything Is For.

Could this be fine? More than fine?

Are you sure you need to know why you’re here, or have a clear “better” purpose than you think you have?

“If you want to be a great leader, you must learn to follow the Tao. Stop trying to control. Let go of fixed plans and concepts, and the world will govern itself.” ~Tao Te Ching #57

Much love, Grace