For what end?

When we are young, we want to become a doctor, an engineer, a mother or father, a mail carrier or plane pilot. And we think that's the purpose of life, to become someone 'recognizable' by society, someone that can be labeled as something -useful is what society expect us to be. Then we get it, whatever we designed it to be, and we keep feeling that's not it, there is something missing, and start expecting events in life that may make us happy. When I find love, when I have a child, when I achieve this or that, when I buy my own car or house, when I travel to a certain place, when I receive that prize, THEN I will feel complete and happy. Those things come and go and we are stuck on the same feeling. None of that seem to fill that empty spot inside, right?

If that's been your experience, welcome to the club. When I was in second year of High School, I wrote a poem for my second French class. "Ne cherche pas ta liberté au-delà de tes frontières [...]" (don't look for your freedom outside your boundaries) I lost the paper, but even though I don't have all the words, I know very well the meaning "Ne cherche plus parce qu'elle est toute entière dans toi" (don't look for it anymore because it is all inside you).  One day I recalled that 'message' from my youth and realized I had gone too far astray from my real purpose. I have done so many things that are absolutely unimportant and very few that are in line with what it is actually necessary. Even though, and as Oprah Winfrey says "there is no wrong path", they all lead to The Path that sooner or later we have to reach.

My mother has recently suffered a massive heart attack and survived, but she has lost some mental abilities, like short term memory and certain acquired knowledge and skills that she used to have. She had taught herself how to use technology like a laptop and a smart phone at 80, but now she seems to struggle placing a phone call, raising the volume and doing other things on the device. I often send her pictures, but I stopped when I realized that she accidentally sends them to other people without knowing what she is doing. This past month, she's been sending me my own picture every day and several times a day. Today, looking at it, I thought it might be a sign that I need to look at myself more closely, more often, more deeply probably. Usually, I don't spend more than a couple of minutes in front of the mirror each morning -just the time to check I put on my smile-, so looking at my own picture may do it. And the question came like a lightening strike: 'who am I really?', and 'am I fulfilling my purpose in this life?'

What have I come here to be? One thing I have realized (for real) these past two years is that I will not find it in the external world. The freedom I need is from my own chains, the freedom from my sense of separation and duality. How much this-here-now am I on this side? And how much that-there-then are you on that side? Aren't we 70% water, and that % of iron, of calcium, of hydrogen, of oxygen, of nitrogen, etc. etc. etc.? We believe that we are separate entities from the outside and from each other, but in fact our material form is a clever combination earthly elements shared by all living and non living entities. Elements that are coming and going through us, passing... In that sense we are all just evolving piles of matter. Certainly the water I hold today was the rain, the cloud or the pee of someone else some time ago. What separation do I believe in? Ha!, I am just a space holder, becoming, decomposing and recomposing constantly. Considering that what holds all the elements together intelligently is energy, what kind of separation is possible?


What is the energy that holds me together? And for what end? This is what the returning Saturn means for people of my age. I recommend reading "Once Upon a Midlife" Classic Stories and Mythic Tales to Illuminate the Middle Years,  by Allan Chinen, MD.