A Longing For Meaning & Purpose
One of my biggest curiosities is what compels people to take action. What urges them to choose sides or modify their behavior. What causes people to deviate from the familiar, memorized self or the collective social convention. While I believe that there is no blanket advice that can be cut and paste for everyone out there, I do believe that people have more in common than they let on. Latent within every one of us is a longing for meaning and purpose. Before we were given a rubric for how to live, whether it be family, media, or the indoctrinating school district, we all had an underlying curiosity for life itself. If you have trouble thinking back, I'm sure it's not hard for you to imagine a 7-year old kid asking questions at the sight of every opportunity. What's also interesting is how that same kid would most likely enact those things that they've newly discovered and even role-play. A process that takes what we know as declarative memories or semantic memories, what we hold as 'philosophical' knowledge into a more tangible expression that may later become implicit or second nature. It is the embodiment of the Greek word "logos" or the divine reason implicit in the cosmos.
Unfortunately, the human enigma, in large part, seems to have lost much of its creativity and ability to break routine habits. This springs about discourse within relationships and many of our own thoughts about ourselves whether we acknowledge them or not. It can be quite disruptive and become somewhat of a static "noise" that plays continuously in the background of your life. A perpetual state of discontent. No matter where you turn, you can never escape the "what ifs" of life and what your heart truly desires and who you truly are. Money, accreditation, notoriety, are all fine and dandy, but purpose is the well of inspiration and eternal youth. Adults must "play" too.
In essence, I believe part of the cure for finding this elusive concept of 'meaning' is to connect back to the inner-self; the one that has no filters, the one that doesn't disguise itself in layers of "beliefs" or clothe itself in opinions. This is the very core of who you are and frankly, children are the guardians of this domain. They act without knowledge of who's watching, or consequence. So long as it does not harm others, I believe this sort of deep discovery is the cure for the Monday-mourning syndrome that many of us face. The point is to live a life and work towards something that you don't need a vacation from. What I believe is the missing link in the conundrum of modern day living is the very feeling of curiosity. Find what strokes your curiosity factor, what makes you question, what makes you forget about your mundane routine and let it live through you. Just make sure that it's authentic to who you are because our story is subjective to everyone else's. Lastly, learn how to motivate yourself because nothing worth having comes easy.
Sincerely,
Josh from @mediablume
