What is a meaningful life?
I really don’t think it’s about working hard.
About having a career. About making a lot of money.
What if a successful life is more about
our inner qualities than material possessions?
When we develop our kindness and awareness,
we may contribute much more to other people’s wellbeing
than when we are constantly under stress because we ‘have to’ work hard.
Maybe someone without a job,
who is committed to healing their past wounds,
taking care of their inner child,
and transforming unwholesome habits,
is contributing much more to society
than someone with a nine to five job
who is unconsciously transferring cycles of suffering
to their family and children.
Of course, you could say, we can have both:
We can work hard for a cause we believe in
AND
devote time and energy to our healing journey.
Yes, maybe we can have both.
And yet, my experience is that our healing journey
can at times feel like a fulltime job.
When we are truly taking time and space
to allow old pain to come to the surface,
it can seem like there is very little space left for other things.
Also, riding the waves of the healing journey
and at the same time having to perform at work can be exhausting.
Then you are constantly having to shift gears
between the inner work and the outer world.
It may not be impossible, but it can be very demanding.
I guess the most caring and loving thing to do,
would be to completely surrender to your healing.
If you have the time, space, and resources to do that
– for a couple of weeks or months in a row –
perhaps that could be the most precious gift
to offer yourself and the world.
So.
Maybe consciousness, kindness and inner peace are the new success.
Maybe a new definition of success can look like:
- How much did I contribute to other people’s wellbeing today?
- How courageously did I look at my own suffering in order to transform it?
- How deeply did I look into reality to see that all forms of life are connected?
- How much time did I spend today just being, breathing, taking care of myself, my body, my feelings?
I hope one day we will stop measuring success by focusing only on outer aspects, such as status, salary, working hours. And that we’ll finally take into account the qualities we as human beings would want to develop: awareness, kindness, clarity, and compassion.
I hope that day will arrive soon.
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