Questioning

I love having a better understanding of myself. I’m always analyzing my thoughts, my motives. When I’m feeling something I don’t like or don’t understand I will sit with myself, and ask myself a hundred different questions. Question after question after question. And I do my best to answer them all honestly. It’s the most incredible feeling when you hit on the right question, asked just the right way in that it compels a deeply real answer, shaken up from depths you didn’t know existed.

It’s kind of remarkable how much better I understand myself each year that passes. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to say I have some perfect understanding of myself. Far from it. The more time goes by, the more I realize how little I know, and I fucking love it. It just amazes me how far I’ve come. I look back on younger Tien and I can care about her, understand her, forgive her… it doesn’t mean I like her. That’s okay though. I really do like the person that I’ve become, for the most part. This cool tree is rooted in that crazy past, so there you go. I can’t hate her too much; she is me. I wouldn’t exist now as I am without her.

I’ve been feeling that old depression rearing up again inside of me and I’ve been attempting to be with it differently, in order to understand it more fully. I finally had a huge breakthrough today. A lot of it comes from feeling like I made a wrong turn somewhere in my life, that I somehow lost my path and can’t find my way back to it. I’ve been feeling like a failure because I had all of these big visions for how I wanted my life to go, and my life looks nothing like any of that.

I cannot believe it took me this long to realize something. Most of those big dreams aren’t mine. It’s almost hilarious the more I think about it.

The winding path that I took to arrive at this conclusion started with the thought that I felt like my life was meaningless. And I started asking myself what would make it meaningful, and I realized all of the old answers to that question didn’t fit any more. I’m so tired of the old clichées: “I want to make a difference in others lives. I want to add beauty to the world.” The world is plenty beautiful and it has a life of its own. It doesn’t need me or anyone else to “make it better.” It will constantly continue to get better simply by virtue of it existing. It’s written into the DNA of the cosmos.

Everyone always talks about how the most meaningful thing you can do in life is “help other people.” I’ve always bought into that and believed it. But throughout my entire life, every time I go to “help people”, coming from the very best of intentions, life always gently (and occasionally not so gently) shows me that I don’t have this ability. No one does. No person can ever help another. We are all learning how to help ourselves and sometimes we get lucky and get to be the vessel that contributes to someone’s growth, but that isn’t us. And walking around thinking you have answers or resources that will help people is just self-aggrandizement. If you truly care about other people, the best thing you can do is learn to help yourself. Grow yourself into the person that you want to be. Embody the things that you believe and live authentically. That’s it. And of course, show up in life and take actions that are in alignment with that.

That was when I was struck by a heavy reminder that human beings truly are just meaning-making machines. Meaning is whatever we want it to be, and whatever we make it. Life may have solid lines, but it’s a coloring book; we can fill in the blanks with any color combination we choose. That’s why we like being around certain people — we love the meaning that they’ve built up around themselves and it feels good to step into their world. So with that as a guide, I asked myself: “if I can make my life mean whatever I want, what would be the most fun? What would make me the most happy?”

I took a little journey back through all of the wishes and dreams I’ve had throughout my life, and asked myself: which ones felt the most magical, the most meaningful?

My answers shocked me. I’m a remarkably simple person, driven almost entirely by the simple pleasures of life. Beautiful scenery, good food, excellent company, delightful music, things that make me stop and question or think. I want such little things: big starry skies on warm summer nights, great loud long belly laughs, wind in my face, purring, kisses, saltwater, a deeper connection with others. That’s all I want. Beautiful moments. Little pleasures.

Everything else I thought I wanted was just a convoluted, watered down version that was dressed up to seem bigger and grander than it actually could ever be. Paper-thin. How did I not recognize this sooner? It’s one of those lies that you’ve told yourself for so long you forget to even question it. Ever since I was a kid, people handed me these ideas of who I was supposed to become. I heard it so much and from so many different people, it became true for me. Maybe that life wasn’t even a terrible thing to want, back then. It made sense. But as I grew up and outgrew those dreams, I clung to them tightly because I never knew life without them. My identity has been wrapped up in what others wanted and expected for me.

Then, when I found myself avoiding those things which I said I wanted, I chalked it all up to one excuse: fear. And yes, fear and I definitely have an unhealthy relationship. I won’t even try to deny that. But it always seemed crazy to me that fear could hold me back for so long in the way that it has. It just didn’t seem right. I still can’t believe it took me so long to realize I’ve been avoiding it because I don’t want it. It’s not me. The dreams and wishes of my past are old ghosts that just need to be put to rest.

Wow. I really don’t have to chase after any of that crap any more. What a heavy burden, lifted from my shoulders. Letting all of that go, I almost feel weightless in comparison. (I’m not, but wow!) I just want to experience freedom and joy and beauty in simple, beautiful moments, scattered through life. They are my greatest pleasure. Everything else is just mind clutter.

It’s been a long time since I felt this free. I’ve made peace with so many of my demons; we have tea all the time now. Tea might end with the occasional impromptu wrestling match, but I don’t bar down the door and try to keep them at bay any more. I invite them in and we talk. Each of them has keys to new and mysterious doors that keep appearing inside of my psyche and sometimes they let me borrow those keys. Between that and running, I feel amazing.

Questions are powerful. But the right questions…. the right questions are fucking magic.