So I logged on today to write an entry about what it means to "find yourself," and I think it's appropriate that the first song to pop up when I hit the shuffle button on Spotify is U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For." What does this mean, really? I've yet to figure this out for myself. Across social media from others who are around the same age as me, I see so many posts about how people claim the key to breaking through all of the noise of everyday life is to "find yourself." At the same time, I don't even know what I'd be looking for.
To be quite honest, I don't know which version of myself from the past I should be emulating or chasing after. I do not who I am in the future, so how can I can even begin to be ok with that? What is this all relative to? Am I looking for the little girl who's scared but idealistic while still being naive? Am I looking for the version that's confident, convicted, but uninformed? Is there really any higher being of myself I should be than who I am right now at this very moment?
Sure, the song is probably about some kind of romantic or spiritual relationship, but right now I'm applying it to the relationship I have with myself. In that context, I feel like I have done so many things to try and figure out what it takes to be closer to "me." I've scaled city walls, I've spoken the tongue of angels, and I've held the hand of devils only to be closer to who I should be (or more appropriately, who society thinks I should be). It's a strange futility going through life feeling like you're chasing after something only to feel like you're no closer than when you started running in the first place.
Like our favorite protagonist in Forrest Gump, when the reporter catches up to him to ask, "Why are you running?" maybe we should all just accept the fact that we're just running for no particular reason. We want to define why we do what we do, and believe it's for some greater purpose. We want to feel like doing this gives us hope, the answer to the meaning of life, and makes us all feel like there is a greater purpose to the mundane world. We like to think that people who are "successful" are driven, never gave up on their dreams, and persisted on against all odds because they knew something we "unsuccessful" people didn't about success. At the end of it all, maybe those we label as "successful" really at the heart of it just did it to do it, and will just do it until they're tired of it before retreating and going home without passing on any hint of what it is we less fortunate should be doing.
While this may seem like a nihilistic point of view, I feel like as I get older there really is no meaning to all of this. I will never find what I'm looking for because it does not exist, and will never exist. It is easy to warp from this into an existential point of view in which we have to accept the futility of it all, but I think, just maybe, it doesn't have to be as depressing as that.
Here's where I'm at with these thoughts. Maybe instead of chasing after this ideal version of myself that I should be content with, I should just stop running. I should just stop, accept that I'm tired, and go home. This home may not be perfect, but right here, right now, in this very moment, this is home. Instead of trying to measure where I am right now, and who I am right now, against any past or present version of what should define success, I need to just make my bed right here where I stand, and be ok with that.
The positive spin on all this is just learning how to be content with being present, and taking each moment one moment at a time. Taking in each breath and be thankful that it isn't the last. It's just as much about never looking back as it is about never looking ahead beyond today. If I can't find reason to be happy right now, then I'll never find it tomorrow anyways. There's a lot of power to this, because instead of leaving things at the will of the universe, I have the power to change my immediate situation and work toward happiness right now. There's a reason why there's the saying, "You'll find what you're looking for in the last place you look," because that place is right here right now. In the end, I think I found myself, and I didn't have to go far to find it.
7:05 p.m. - 08-06-17