The Search to Find Ourselves
One night I had a vision of walking along a sandy beach filled with people bustling about...busy, busy, busy digging and digging. Some had dug HUGE underground caverns and elaborate tunnels and still they were straining to dig more, dig faster.I wanted to know what was going on and so stopped one to talk.
She was obviously quite irritated by my interruption but waited impatiently through obligation to hear my question. "What's going on?" I began. "What's everyone doing here?" "Don't you know?" she replied incredulously... "this is life's most important excavation here..I'm surprised you're not here yourself. Anyone with any depth of thinking is here.""But what are you DOING here?" I persisted."We are looking for the meaning of life... we are searching to find ourselves!""But why?" I queried.
Exasperation flickered across the face of the woman in front of me, but held captive by an inner obligation to 'be polite,' she answered slowly and evenly -- as if speaking to a very young child, a very old person, or to someone who didn't understand English. "Why we all need to find ourselves dear! How else can we discover who we are? How else can we find our faults and fix them? "I looked around at the giant mounds of sand, at the extravagant tools and machinery the people had developed to help them dig, at their grim faces and rigid bodies.
I thought about their resolute determination to 'get to the bottom of it all and discover themselves,' and suddenly I saw the folly of my own desperate search to find myself and to discover who I am... and I began to laugh.The lady with whom I spoke was quite taken aback. Her eyes flashed with defiance and her voice crackled with annoyance, "What are you laughing about?" she snapped."I'm sorry," I replied, "I am not laughing at you, but with you, for I see my own life reflected in all of your hard work. And as I look at the elaborate tunnels and castles you have built in the sand suddenly I realize that life is not about finding myself so that I can fix my flaws and get on with living.
Life is about what we create!When we are children we revel in wonder at the sand that is so pliable and fun to play with; we squeal with delight as our bucket of water soaks into the fine sand and forms lovely moats around our castles; we soak up the warmth of the sun on our kin and marvel at the creations that we have made...knowing that in time they too shall dissolve once again into the sandy beach from whence they came...to provide yet another opportunity for us to build again. And suddenly I am filled with the glorious realization that the beach is here, not for us to dig endlessly into the depths of the sand searching for the key to a happy life; the beach is here to provide a playground within which we can create whatever we want, however we want. And of course, the greatest teacher with it comes to building sand castles is the child within each and every one of us."