Episode 104. Maybe You Don't Need to Find Yourself

What in life deserves our time and attention and what things don't. I hope that as we consider that question along with other topics on this show, that we can all learn to live our lives just a little more intentionally. This is Seth Roberts. Thanks for joining me on Skipping Stones - “Maybe You Don’t Need to Find Yourself.”

If you have the luxury of being able to go on a journey of self-discovery in order to find yourself, I think you can count yourself amongst some of the more privileged of the world. For a lot of people, life doesn't really give them any choices of who to be. Finding yourself is irrelevant. When you're too busy staying alive to sit and ponder it.

Maybe it's more privileged in some ways to have your life filled with purpose, even if that daily purpose is simply to stay fed. There's a kind of spiritual death I think that happens when the work is done and we don't know what to do with ourselves. I think that makes it all the more important for us to find ourselves and existence without meaningful work is empty.

The word work has a bad rap to it, but people plain and simple are not happy without it. It. We have to have something to work on, and the less important we find that work, the more discontent we are. How many movies have been made about people that are dissatisfied with their comfortable existence? I'm thinking of the Matrix, the Secret Life of Walter Mitty, uh, garden State, et cetera.

They go on journeys and either find new purpose and something different, or they go back to the same life with new eyes. I think we need meaningful work. And for me, I think the downfall of religion is actually one of the saddest things to have happened over the last century. Because where do you think most average people found their meaningful work?

Things like church have been replaced with activities. Which, albeit fun, have no meaningful purpose. Whereas doing a menial task, like helping to clean out someone's home when done out of religious devotion can be a task that makes you feel good. I know a lot of people will say they don't need religion to do service, which is true, but it's also true that the majority of service projects done are organized by religions.

Institutions give average people a place to contribute. But whether our meaningful work comes from religion or not, we still need it to feel like we know who we are. There are a lot of things we can do in life, and some are more likely to make you feel good about yourself than others. Avoiding work and spending our time with other people that avoid work is a pretty good way to feel empty.

On the other hand, there are a lot of things that can be very fulfilling. It could be art service, working, a regular job that contributes towards keeping the world functioning. What really matters though is that you find it to be meaningful. I personally feel like being a stockbroker would feel kind of empty.

I think it serves a purpose in this world, and I would certainly enjoy the money, but the end of the day, I think I'd prefer to work for one of the companies being traded by the brokers. What really is meaningful to me though is the work I do at home and for my family. Striving to make a comfortable home for my family is enough to make me feel like I'm giving something to humanity in an important way.

Driving the kids off at school, saying prayers with them at night, handing them ice packs anytime they say Ouch. It all really fulfills me. One of the ways I found myself was simply by doing what everyone expects you to do. Live life, have a family, and do your best not to cause too much psychological trauma in the process.

Something I don't love about the phrase finding yourself is that it has an implication that there is some immutable truth out there for you to learn. I don't think very many things about us are truly unchangeable. Though we may find that we feel like we fit into a certain place in the world, but just as likely as not a few years down the road, you may no longer feel like you do belong there anymore, and you'll have to find yourself all over again. 

I just don't think finding yourself is really about finding the one thing you were meant to do or the one place you were meant to be. Rather, finding yourself is simply about finding something that matters to you, that you're also willing to invest your time into. When people choose to go out into the world to live it up and seek out adventures, I think the real thing they end up finding most of the time is that what they set out to find.

It was right where everyone told them it was to begin with. Maybe some people need to go live an empty life for a while before they can appreciate a full one. So, embarking on a journey to find yourself in all the wrong places may serve its purpose, but it does seem a little sad sometimes to see people living in such a way that doesn't give them any lasting satisfaction.

It is easy to look at less adventurous people who maybe skip the wildlife and the adventures in exchange for a family or a life dedicated to service and think that they're really missing out on life. But to the contrary, I think maybe they're the ones that have life figured out. Maybe for this reason, the phrase finding yourself usually comes across like a euphemism for not being content and lacking any kind of guiding star.

We can search and search for ourselves all of our lives, but we will never find ourselves until we commit to some kind of meaningful work. The good news is that there is no limit to the number of meaningful things we can work towards. A lot of meaningful work can be found by simply looking around wherever you stand and finding a need.

But if you do feel the need to start out on a journey to find yourself. I hope you don't have to look far. And the nice thing about finding yourself is that when you do figure out where you are. You'll already be there. This is Skipping Stones - “Maybe You Don’t Need to Find Yourself.” You can find this podcast anywhere you choose to listen to podcasts.

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