When I first realized that the purpose of life is to be alive and to experience life a big weight lifted off my shoulders. I stopped feeling bad about my natural desire to travel the world and I stopped feeling that I was frivolous even having the desire. The inner conflict of "I'm supposed to do something very important vs. I just want to travel and experience things" stopped being an issue. I allowed myself to just take those trips for a while.
Then unfortunately my mom died. Just a few months prior I was heading to Nepal, without my then-new husband and my mom didn't like that. She believed that now that I was married I wasn't supposed to go places without my husband, and it didn't matter that my husband had no interest in going to Nepal. He didn't have a problem with me going, my mom had a problem. I went anyway, but then she died shortly after. That sent me for a loop. Of course mom's death had nothing to do with my trip, but some weird thoughts entered my mind. Grief was pretty brutal and somehow after that my fun trips by myself disappeared. The desire stayed, but the trips themselves stopped. And then I had a baby, and then the pandemic happened and we chose to close our brick-and-mortar business and the income kind of dissipated so I no longer could afford those trips. I am pretty good at traveling on a budget, but now the budget became so small that the only thing I could afford was a trip to visit a friend and a crash on their couch.
Remembering that my life purpose is simply to be alive and to experience life fully allowed me to change careers and follow my true desires. Instead of going back into corporate world I became a life coach and a yoga teacher. I still let the question about life purpose bounce inside of me.
And then I realized that the purpose of life is not just be alive, but be alive AS MYSELF, the way I came here to be, to experience life through MY lens, my energy, not my conditioning. Around the same time, as if by magic, I was sent onto the path of really trying to figure out who I am. I came across Human Design and got diagnosed with ADHD. Both Human Design and ADHD validated my life experiences. It was a mix of understanding, normalizing, grief and relief. I let go of all hopes of becoming some sort of conventional success story, it is not who I am.
Understanding that I am here to live life as myself helped me learn to trust myself more and pay less attention to opinions of others. And at the same time, I give more space to others, like my husband to be whatever he is, even though sometimes he drives me crazy. The fun part is that when I let them be, their tantrums (and mine) end much faster.
I am still trying to figure out who I am, I imagine it will take a while LOL. But so far I can say that I own more of my truth. In practical terms, I accept my desires and allow myself to voice what's true for me. As an example, if my family wants to go somewhere and I don't want to, before I would go, now I stay behind. I am learning to discern what ideas and dreams belong to me and what don't, often by trial and error. For example, do I really like gardening, or do I just like the idea of it? I was going to give up my plot in the community garden because life seems to be too busy but when I went there and truly felt into it, I realized that I wanted to keep my little garden because it brings me joy. So, now I am just trying to make it less maintenance rather than giving it up altogether.
And now that I am thinking about it, perhaps the biggest thing that changed since I realized that I am here to live life as MYSELF is that I don't let my family, especially my dad, define who I am and his opinions influence what I do with my life. I don't even defend myself to him anymore and I don't look for his approval. Just this alone freed a lot of energy from struggle, guilt and people pleasing.
People even sometimes told me that it was not pleasant to be around me when I refused to comply. To which I responded that it was not my purpose of existence to please them. They didn't like my response and I let them not like it. I let myself feel the discomfort of that, but I held my ground.
So, what I want to say with this writing is this - big existential questions are important. They are not some sort of philosophical luxury, quite the opposite, they can be a compass for your whole life. They remind us what is important and that in turn helps us make decisions in daily life.
It is so easy to forget what's important between laundry, shuttling kids around, making that urgent report for the boss... For me, the big questions are like the North Star that keeps me on track. If I didn’t ask those questions, I’d still be doing what was expected of me — and back then, I was pretty unhappy and lost.
What about you? What big existential questions are you pondering? Hit reply and let me know, I LOVE hearing from you!
Nataliya
P.S. Life’s too short for struggle. Email me and let’s chat about your life — together we’ll discover your superpower and how to suffer less and enjoy more.
3259 Alder St, Victoria, BC V8X 1P3
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