Now's the Time to Ask the Big Question: Are You Being You?

I recently read an intriguing book called “Let Your Life Speak,” by Parker J. Palmer, in which he relates a Hasidic tale with a profound message: “Rabbi Zusya, when he was an old man, said: ‘In the coming world, they will not ask me: Why were you not Moses? They will ask me: Why were you not Zusya?’”

This caused me to reflect on several things. First it seems to be part of the human condition to try to hide our real selves and pretend to be something we’re not. And second, the truth is that for much of my life I tried to cobble together who I was by taking my cue from whatever I was doing in the external world. It was only in the past several decades, that I slowed down enough to begin asking the universal questions: Who am I, why am I here on Earth and what is my life’s purpose?

I recalled that even as a young girl of 10, I knew intuitively that there was something within me striving to express, I just couldn’t connect with whatever it was. It would take many more years before I became aware of the life I was born to experience and then to free myself from invalid beliefs and to start living it. As it was, I lived in survival mode a lot of the time and in what I now call living by default instead of by design. This meant that my only choice involved how to respond to whatever happened to me.

Through a great deal of contemplation and introspection, I finally learned that the eternal and sublime energy that is within everyone and everything, which I call God, is also in me. And like a wave is part of the ocean but not all of it, I possess the same characteristics and sublime qualities. When I accepted that I was an individualized expression of this energy-intelligence-love-God, I began to grasp the truth of myself and started focusing on creating good in my life.

As a natural part of choosing to open to this fuller concept of life, I soon realized that the reason I am here on Earth is to open to growing through life and learning the lessons instead of just going through it. In this way, I can learn to express life as the one and only real me, which results in joy and happiness for me and makes the world a better place by my having been born.

The big challenge for me was in finding my life’s unique purpose, and I was in angst over this quest for many years. During this time, I also realized that this is the question that undoes so many people. I believe that much of the great unhappiness in the world, the depression, the abuse of drugs and generalized soul-sickness is directly linked to not seeking, not finding and not understanding our reason for being.

I sought my life purpose in the business world and discovered it wasn’t there. Immediately after the short-lived “high” I would get from earning more money or receiving an award, the deep longing within me would always return. I bless those experiences now, for they were what keep me seeking. I also learned that I am a highly sensitive person, and that while I had the intellectual capacity to continue pursuing success in the corporate sector, I often found myself in situations that emotionally and spiritually were not compatible with my soul.

It was during my beloved husband’s lengthy decline that I decided to withdraw from the external world to seek a more loving and enlightened way in which to assist him on his last life journey. In the desperation of the situation, I turned within to the innermost core of my being seeking help and guidance, and discovered the sanctuary of love, peace and wisdom that is the heart’s desire of every human being. My life has not been the same since.

In all the positions I have held in the media or the business world, it was primarily my writing ability that allowed me to be successful. But it wasn’t until my husband was dying that the creative energy came through me with a force that I had never known before – and with a purpose that could not be denied. The result was a book chronicling our experience. After that, the concept for another book came to me in meditation and the passion to do it was equally powerful. And the pattern continues.

How interesting that I have known since childhood that I was a writer, yet I had never embraced it as truth. I kept seeking outside of me for who I was to be.

I learned that our true calling – who we are, why we are here and our life purpose – is revealed to us from within, and doesn’t come to us from out there – the external world. And we certainly don’t have to live our lives reacting to and accepting others’ expectations of us. When we can stop trying to be someone else, we can start living the wonderful lives that I believe we were born to live, instead of the poor imitations we create for ourselves.

“To be nobody-but-yourself – in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else – means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.” –e.e. cummings
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Copyright © 2009 by Fern Stewart Welch

The author’s books: “You Can Live A Balanced Life In An Unbalanced World!” and “The Heart Knows the Way – How to Follow Your Heart to a Conscious Connection with the Divine Spirit Within” are available at Amazon.com and other online booksellers, as well as through major bookstores such as Barnes & Noble and Borders.