There are times when we’re young that we are also confident. Someone will ask, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” And we can give a quick answer. But as we grow, things are not so clear as when we were children. Life gets complicated because we have more and more responsibility–for our own lives, and the lives of those in our care.
We may feel lost. We may not be sure where we’re going anymore. We may not even have a direction in mind. We look around and think we see everyone else in a situation we’d like to be in, too; but we’re just not there–and don’t know if we’ll ever be.
We can feel pretty depressed in times like these. We can feel very alone and unimportant.
Then something happens.
No, we don’t win the lottery.
The something that happens may not seem profitable at the time. It may not be fun. In fact, we may want to avoid suffering through it.
But we do suffer through it. And afterwards, it’s possible that we find some good in it. We may find our true self in it, too.
When this something happens, we are changed by it. We may be so changed that we begin to live for someone else. And in the process we find our true self–the person we were meant to be.
Translating a World on the Edge 