Creating The Webbd Wheel: What Am I For?
In which we search for our place ...
We have an obnoxious habit of asking young people what they want to do when they grow up. I hated that question as a kid, and it still makes me cringe as an adult. How many of us can easily say what we want to do today or this week, let alone for the rest of our lives? It’s such an unfair question. It implies one should know what one wants to do, and if we can’t answer it, something is wrong with us. We’ll be a failure. We have no ambition. We’ve failed before we’re 20 years old. It also implies life can be neatly planned out.
Ha!
In fact, it’s the wrong question. The question is not what do we want to do, but who are we? Now, there’s a good question!
What are we for? What’s the highest expression of who we are? What does the world need that we, and we alone, can contribute out of our unique set of strengths and weaknesses?
Even more useful than these questions would be someone who actually listened to the answers without talking about higher educational degrees, expense, job possibilities, and earning potential.
I hope everyone is familiar with the exquisite feeling of being engaged with something we know we were born to do. I have a short list of activities that give me that feeling: swimming, teaching, writing, gardening, dancing. They are home and happiness, meaning and belonging and contribution.
Whether or not I can make a lot (or even a little) money doing them is a different, much less important question. I wasn’t born to make money. It’s merely a social necessity. When my paycheck hits the bank, I don’t have any feeling of fulfilling my destiny. I just know I can pay the bills.
Sadly, people of every age get a lot more encouragement to build a pseudo self that satisfies expectations and produces something judged as monetarily valuable than to uncover who they really are and what they’re for. Production is far more valuable than happiness. Dissatisfied people are profitable.
In post #39 of The Hanged Man, Rose Red feels increasing pressure to follow the path her mother has laid out for her, a path leading to nothing she wants. She’s not sure what she does want, but she can recognize what she doesn’t want. She’s given no choice, no alternatives, until Artemis offers another way, a way that feels right, a way that feels like home, something she was born to do.
The choice is easy for her, but the price is high. It means a complete break from her parents and the only home she’s ever known. It means an active choice to break away from her mother, an agonizing prospect filled with guilt and shame.
When our true life calls out to us, we long to answer. It searches for us even as we search for it. Somewhere, we are needed. We are essential. The world is impoverished if we don’t find out what we’re for. To remain bound to the wrong place, wrong people, and wrong life is to waste who we are.
So get out there, meet people, be uncomfortable, challenge yourself, follow a dream, and find our what you’re for. Or, if you’re a back door kind of person, find out what you’re not for. It will narrow the options!
(This essay was published with post #39 of The Hanged Man.)