Where are You in Your Journey?

I’m beginning to understand that our lives are essentially lived in three phases. First we’re the child and we’re exploring our world and already learning so much about ourselves. Sadly not all those things we learn about ourselves are positive, but nevertheless they do begin to shape who we are.

Then we move into young adulthood and our journey of discovery continues. At the same time, there’s a very real need to pull away from our tribe, to seek out our own in terms of fulfilling needs, creating our own safety, whatever that is. There’s a certain amount of rebellion that kicks in and for the most part, we actually don’t even understand what the rebellion is against, what it’s all about, but somehow it feels like we’re fulfilling our own destiny and becoming who we’re meant to be.

The third phase for me is broken down into two phases. That may sound a little contradictory – why not just say that we live our lives in four phases? What I mean here is that as we progress into mid-life which essentially is around mid to late thirties and up, we begin to see that the rebellion actually didn’t serve us well. We begin to become either more settled or our lives go through a complete 180 and everything that we thought we were, and everything we thought we’d become is flipped on it’s head. And at this point, we almost feel like we’re starting all over again. Like we’re starting at the beginning of discovering who we are, what we stand for, what our true values are, what we want to be, who we want to be. Where we want to be in our lives 20/30/40 years from now!

This is when we finally are taken down the path of really understanding ourselves. This is a phase – I believe begins around age 50, earlier than that, if you’re lucky. Earlier than that, depending on how in-tune you actually have always been with yourself. Your level of self-belief and self-worth and self-confidence. Relationships begin to fall away, to end, or to blossom into beautiful and fulfilling experiences. You become so much more aware of the fragility of life. You start to understand that this life you’ve been given, is a precious gift and requires of you to honour it in every way that you can. The search for the meaning of life, starts to make sense and as you become more aware of your own mortality, the senseless arguing, the senseless need to be right, the senseless worrying about what other people think, the senseless concern about how fat or how thin you are, the senseless need to be accepted, just hit you with a realization that none of that matters. It doesn’t matter that you made so much money that you own the biggest house, the best car, you have the biggest bank balance. It doesn’t matter that you’ve traveled the world and that you bath in milk every night.

There is an understanding of yourself that comes to

you in the sunset of your life. You look back at what you’ve done, what you’ve created. And you begin to really lean into the most cherished and beautiful experiences that you have had along this journey. You look at your children and become extremely grateful for the love that they give you, the reciprocation of unconditional love that you have shared with them through your life and theirs. If you’re fortunate enough to have grandchildren, you look at them through the same eyes, but with a much deeper appreciation for what you have created – because without you, your children and their children would not exist. In this period of your life, you come to understand that all that matters is the precious memories that you’ve created together with everyone that you have been touched with in your life. You come to understand that people will always remember the experiences that you gave them and because of that, you become so much more determined to only give everyone a great experience with you. You become so much more aware of how important it is that when people leave your company, they should feel better for having been in it.

You want to leave this world with no regrets. You don’t even want to live any part of your life with regret. And in understanding this, you realise how important it is, on this last phase of your life, that you set things right with everyone that you have harmed. That you apologise for what you did to make them not feel honoured. That you recognise that you are not perfect, and never have been, but the need to strive for perfection in everything that you can, becomes powerful and with a deep sense of satisfaction, you realise that boy, somehow you’re getting it right.

What phase of your life’s journey do you find yourself in?