Day 257 - Chasing Life Instead of Living Life

What does it mean to ‘chase life’ rather than to ‘live life’?

For me it involved goals: academic goals, relationship goals, location goals, career goals, family goals and so on.

I would create a goal for myself and then figure out a path to get there, and I would walk that path, adjusting along the way. For me, at the time, this was sufficient and the 'right' way to 'fully live life', because I was accomplishing the things I set out to do.

The ‘chasing’ comes in when I would project the goal into the future, and then project ‘who I would be’ when I got there, thinking and believing that my self-experience would change once I accomplished the goal.

The thing is, when I would complete the goal, I would still inevitably be the same person. I would have the same insecurities, the same uncertainties, and I also noticed that new insecurities and uncertainties would open up once the goal was reached, as the habit and pattern of participation into such things in my mind still existed.

It is humbling to look back over the past decade and realize that throughout all my accomplishments, all the effort and hard work, I was missing one huge, important main ingredient: SELF HERE.

I never focused on sinking into my own skin, integrating into my environment, and establishing a foundation of self wherever I was, because I was always moving, changing directions, living places temporarily, keeping only one foot in the present moment and another foot in the future projection: constantly chasing ideas as future goals. 

The consequence of this is that there is little to no SELF (who I am, as I am RIGHT NOW) in the goals, there is only a projected version of ‘who I will become then’, only once I get there, as if the walking of the path and the attaining of the goal was the most important defining action that would shape and create me.

My first reaction to this realization was that I had been doing it all wrong and now I am back at square one, but these actions or elements of the process of self-creation are essential ingredients, and all is not lost. Along the way, I self-introspected, gained self-understanding and awareness, developed skills and qualities that I now have and cannot be taken away. I also gained work experience, degrees, certifications and money, which can serve me now and in the future.

What I was missing was a solid foundation of ‘self here’. Self Here meaning, the understanding and realization that I can be fully whole, fulfilled and present in the Here/Now moment, that I belong here, wherever I am, simply because it is where I have placed myself in awareness. I created a path, and I am walking it – I don’t have to wait to attain something or accomplish anything in order to develop these things, I have everything I need to build my SELF right here and right now, wherein everything that I am not satisfied with or that I want to develop can only happen right here, right now in the present moment wherever I am. And it is not only possible, but rather absolutely essential that I do so, otherwise I will never become the potential I see, because I had placed it in the future, in a job, in a location, at a certain salary and with a certain life.

To be continued in my next blog….