How far will you search for yourself?

I stood on the deck at the back of my house next to the tree and the grass and the sky. It was night and I stared upon a full set of stars and a moon and few clouds.

I closed my eyes away from the distraction of reality and lifted myself out of my body. There I stood below, head up and arms dropped at my sides. And then the deck and the house and trees. Higher still capturing streets and highways in my mind’s eye.

Higher still.

The city. Many of them. Rivers snaking along on the edges of the continent. The familiar shape of my world; the glistening masses of the North; The seas and great oceans. And then clouds blurred my vision and dampened my skin.

Darkness and cold soon enveloped me. The rushing air slowly died away and the vacuum of nothingness surrounded me.

It was beautiful; the arc of the Earth; the Moon in front of the Sun. But I was cold and alone and I had long ago lost control of my travel, and with it any possibility of turning around and setting for home; and pain and fear and doubt and self-pity were all I could focus on.

And yet higher still I went.

The perfect orbs of distant planets rushed past me; the golden fire of the Sun in the center. And then other similar systems entered my vision. Many thousands of these lay scattered in semi-orderly fashion, quickly receding and shrinking away as I ascended further.

And eventually my ascent slowed and ended and I finally stood far enough back to observe the entire picture. This was where I sought; the end of my journey; here I finally find my answers.

For many days I stared, deeply searching the canvas before me; searching for an answer. Waiting and meditating until enlightenment.

And yet somehow, there was a distinct familiarity with what I was watching. And after a long period of silence and reflection I suddenly recalled, much to my dismay, what I stared upon.

It looked exactly like the sky I stood under on the deck at the back of my house next to the tree and the grass and the sky.

Such a long journey… Have I wasted my precious time and energy? Why couldn’t I simply have accepted the knowledge and wisdom I had before I started on this adventure? Why quest and hurt and suffer for an answer I had before I asked the question? What… have I gained?

And as I faded back into myself, and despondently rejoined my physical body, the answer came to me in my own voice:

Life is an experience, not an objective.

That the end, is not the point at which to feel the joy of success or the disappointment of failure; that the beauty and experience of the journey itself is where joy lies hidden away, in between the moments, behind the interactions, under each act and each sacrifice, begging to be observed and appreciated.

Every day. Every minute. If we could appreciate every second, then we would have truly lived full lives, irrespective of the end, whatever it may be.

May we all win.

And that’s just life isn’t it? Tricky and full of misguiding falsities. But if God were to give us a cheat code that takes us straight to the end of the game, we would have enjoyed and experienced nothing.

Ironic; The cheat-code cheats us out of experiencing life by delivering results without effort.

We find that our taste has become bland, and our ears monotone. And we search desperately to regain our love for life with anti-life escapisms.

And so, maybe if we ignore these god-mode, cheat-code impulses and reach for the “hands-dirty” approach, we might find ourselves closer to life, and thus fulfilled.

Albeit slow and painful, and often heartbreaking and disillusioning, the sad truth may be that the true enjoyment of life is found in the retrospective vision of suffering!

And so, let’s not shirk the work or avoid the commitments. That’s a perspective that we need to rid ourselves of as quickly as we can. Because it certainly is addictive; to be lazy. To be in our safe zone. To be unaccountable. And to not be aware of every moment wasted.

That’s a recipe for being ignored and inconsequential.

Let’s embrace the risk of commitment, and gamble our pride and reputation. Go out there and do something world-changing! Save a homeless person, start a business, get a dog, change jobs,  introduce people, join a club, or even randomly have a heart to heart conversation with a stranger! For each of us, it may be a different act, but the risk to each of us feels the same.

Yes, it’s a gamble. It’s a risk. But here’s what we have the most difficulty coming to terms with: Losing a life-gamble is not the end of the world. You have not lost the entire game. You’ve just sacrificed a pawn to get better positioning. In other words: You live and you learn.

The next time you engage in a battle, the experience of the last battle and the one before and the one before; those will guide your footsteps, determine your next words, and carry you a little further than before.

In the end, that’s the game: We all start off with one step forward-twenty steps back. and then we learn, and the next time we etch our way to one step forward-19 steps back… further and further until we start progressing again… two steps forward-one step back…five steps forward-two steps back. And so the dance continues.

And its a lifetime of playing, involving arrays of possibilities, many lost battles, and many sacrifices. But also many new laughs, new friends, loves, and experiences.

And the winner? The one who learns, changes, and executes again and again. The one who overcomes the obstacles of pride and fear. The one who above all, does not stop evolving. Does not stop learning. Never stops risking.

May we all win.