live your life
"What I found so resonant about it was not that he was saying 'live life'; not that he was saying 'seize the day'; but 'live your life'.... how not simply to move through days, but how to move through days as oneself, as an integrated person."
So much energy is spent on creating oneself that we forget that our selves already exist, fully formed, right in this time.
The search for meaning encourages us to view ourselves as incomplete: if we were complete, after all, would we feel so unfulfilled? The search for meaning tells us that there is still much more work to do, many more experiences and redemptive suffering to be done. It keeps us searching in unrest.
Shunryu Suzuki wrote that if we have any hope for the future, we cannot take the present seriously. Essentially, stop trying to plan and wish, and instead focus your energies on what is right now.
The religious will say, "everything happens for a reason," or "god never gives you more than you can handle." I think we are all getting at the same thing: live this life as best you can. Sometimes that means changing it in some way; it comes down to authenticity: are you moving through your days as your own self?
Or as another wanderer told me once: is there any place more authentic than where you are right now?
