What Does Life Want From You?

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Live your questions now, and perhaps even without knowing it, you will live along some distant day into your answers.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

I was listening to a guided meditation the other day that posed 2 questions:

1) What do I really want from life?

2) What does life want from me?

I am certain we have all asked ourselves the first question many times. But I found the second one more intriguing to ponder over. I hope that these questions work in concert with one another. When we delve deep into our inner wisdom, we discover what we are yearning for. Not only the material things, but the qualities and values we cherish in life. Whether they are relationship-oriented, qualities of our heart, or values of our soul, we find the aspects of life that bring us joy, happiness, love, and the multitude of other feelings we'd like to generate as we journey on our path.

To ask yourself what you really want from life can be daunting. We have been so well trained to keep busy and push forward from each chore to chore, project to project, job to job, the next big thing. Our society has told us that we are supposed to have good jobs and move up the ladder while finding a partner and raising a family. Some of us struggle and struggle to make ends meet, to carry out our obligations, to please others, to... to... to... We have to attend to everything, every day. Even if everything seems perfect on the surface, we often feel something is missing. After a while, it becomes harder and harder to discover what we really want out of life.

This is where those moments of stillness can come in handy. To be still and let the question swirl around. Journaling about what we want is helpful as well. Jot down your values and ponder ways to meet them. Note your biggest dreams, and where you would like to be. What you would like to be. How you want to spend your time. What feelings do you hope to conjure up over and over. When you keep asking, your heart will start answering and nudging you in the direction of your desires while keeping you in line with your values.

As you begin to answer the first question of what you really want in life, you might be propelled into the second question: What does life want from you? I started out thinking of this question from different viewpoints of the people in our lives. Our mom always wants the best for us. They want us to be happy. They want us to be strong, brave, content, and loving. A dear friend or partner will also want us to be loyal, helpful, and caring. Our universe, God, or Spirit will want us to be kind, compassionate, and giving. Our bosses and co-workers want us to be productive, innovative, and supportive.

Life, in the form of our relationships, is asking us to be a lot of things. But what does it really want from us? Again, sit in stillness with this question. In addition to those above viewpoints, I believe life will also want you to live up to your values. To achieve your dreams and desires. But life also wants you to take care of yourself. It wants you to discover, learn, understand and accept everything about your blessed self. It wants your heart to be full of love for yourself and others. To appreciate and be grateful for everything around you. Life wants you to gracefully succeed at being you. I am certain that life will present you with more of its personalized requests when you sit in silence and ask.

Both of these questions require diving deep into your heart and soul. I doubt if they can be answered quickly. The answers need time to be known. To evolve and grow. To define themselves in greater detail. I also believe they will change, and rearrange in priority as we all travel along our sacred journey.

For me, I am trying to keep the perspective of what I am after in this life within the context of the bigger picture of my life as a whole, and what it may want from me. It's hard to explain, but I sometimes sense there is another force merging my desires to be in harmony with the rest of the world around me. My family and friends, and my surroundings, all lead towards a bigger connection with one another and everything. Like I said, hard to explain... I sometimes scare myself with this deep thinking, and would rather just go and follow a little white golf ball around instead!

What does life want from you?

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