Searching 4 What?

It only makes sense that one of my first few blogs should be about searching.

Sure, but what does it all mean?  Searching 4 Something? Who is searching and for what?  To be honest, I don’t have a universal answer. I don’t by any means profess to be any kind of expert on the topic of searching. There are many “experts” past and present who have written extensively on the topic of humanity’s search for meaning in life, for love, happiness, for answers to life’s important and not so important questions.  In this very moment, I foresee this blog being about my own stories.  Ones documenting my adventures in the internal and external worlds I play in.  Having learned some lessons recently on impermanence, I recognize that this too may change. My intentions for this blog, what I may want to write about, the lenses that I use to view and make sense of my world are all changing as I even write this.  I don’t have a fancy GPS guiding my journey.  Just an old fashioned internal compass that I am still learning how to fine tune!

It is my humble opinion based on my own experience as well as the stories I have heard and observed of fellow travelers… that many of us do indeed at times go on a quest of sorts.  Some life event happens to us and takes us by surprise. Maybe it affects our health, affects our family, our community; that sparks a question or a subtle change in us.  Perhaps an inner nagging that something or everything in our life does not fit quite as nicely as we were used to anymore. A new car, house, re-decorating the living room again just doesn’t seem to give any real lasting pleasure. Artificial and superficial conversations about the weather, the plans for the weekend or any other topic seem to have lost its allure.  So either at a conscious or unconscious level, we start looking for answers, explanations or even just a temporary stopgap. Sometimes stopgaps, which the dictionary defines as an improvised substitute for something lacking, are necessary as a means to survival.  Watching hours of television re-runs, staring at the inside of an open refrigerator for the 10^th time in an hour,  re-organizing the insides of all my closets and sleeping have all been familiar friends for me on this journey.

Meeting discontent and emptiness at the crucial intersections of life can be tough.  We can and do struggle, grasping at anything to find firm grounding, even a häagen daz ice cream bar at times!

This is my very real journey. I am learning to live it moment by moment. The somewhat anal retentive parts of me want to quickly organize my life into neat little stories in chronological order. But life is messy and it does not quite work that way. At least my life does not.  I have discovered that “linear paths” do not exist all too often.  Time and life have been great teachers in showing me the beauty in my very own “non-linear” path towards searching for meaning and wholeness.

In my own journey I am still learning  to listen and stop fighting the emptiness I feel inside and outside. I am stumbling, falling in holes for long and sometimes…more recently… shorter periods of times and learning to embrace it all. The emptiness, the sadness, the loneliness that remained even after I spent the afternoon at Starbucks with friends,  are all clues, vying for my attention.  When I remember to just “be” with the pauses in between the constant thinking and analyzing, then… the questions themselves  sometimes start to become markers and ignite and light within me a path that reveals this inner quest I find myself on.

These are my searching stories, my postcards on this quest. Happy travelling!