Courage, Commitment, and Living Your Heart: Why Am I Here?

In my novel, Fellowship of the Heart, Eric Lafarnge has a conversation with his heart and asks his heart why anyone would choose not to live authentically and true to oneself. His question precipitates this answer: “Because to discover the depth’s of one’s soul and choose and create and live your life requires courage and commitment. No easiness about it. Living life with a sense of purpose, however, gives significance and fulfillment.”
Why isn’t it easy? When we don’t conform to society’s expectations, the norm, or maintain status quo, it makes us stand out. This makes our egos kick into high gear to protect self from undue scrutiny or possible ridicule. We end up conforming, just trying to look like most other folks. All of that sort of behavior makes for an illusory life experience, one that generates a sense of emptiness, a vacuum because our core self languishes under the façade created by the ego.
Emptiness, a hole in the soul, a sense that there must be a greater reason for me to be here — do these sound familiar? Why am I here? Isn’t there something more to life? Am I always just going to look forward to weekends and vacations? Yeah, you get it because as adults, especially, we ask these questions if we have not come to know Self.
What am I suggesting by all this? When we don’t discover Self and when we live in the illusory world of conformity, always hoping for something better to happen, then we have bought into someone else’s game, and we have lost our sense of identity. We will never be truly happy. We resign ourselves to “that’s the way life is.” Remember Thoreau: “…quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.” Now, some can make it look pretty good, but a life crisis, a time of reckoning with the Self, will happen. Either discovery can occur at that point or one can suffer, perhaps serious mental and emotional illness.
I will have more to say about this. In fact, I’ve written a whole novel about it. Eric Lafarnge and his wife Anne both engage in this journey of discovery. Have you? It’s not easy, but that doesn’t mean it’s complex. To let your heart be manifested requires courage on a continuing basis — committment. Ego doesn’t give up very easily. The rewards of knowing yourself and living a life of significance and fulfillment, though, are worth sorting it all out.

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