Life's Mission: To Become Yourself

I heard a story about a colleague's grandfather. He's playing a guitar, even though he's over 80. It's an unusual thing. I've learned that back in his younger years he was a professional, touring musician but his wife - the grandma forbid him to do it. So he gave up and got a regular job. And returned to the guitar just recently, after grandma died.

External Expectations

This made me think about all the people that give up on being their true self due to the enormous conventional expectations around them. I do it and you do it. We get the "right" kind of education, right kind of job. We're expected to get married and be normal.

None of this has anything to do with our talents and wants. This has nothing to do with our unique composition of abilities, experiences and desires. So we sacrifice our true self and conform to the very subtle but persistent cultural norms. We divert from being ourselves.

What You Want

In the end all that matters is what you want to do. In the long run theres' no other way to be happy. All the conventional expectations go away with age. When people that had certain view of how we should be and what we should do inevitably pass, we're left alone and are free to do whatever we want. That's why the old people are sometimes so frivolous, so liberal. Because the're actually free. The sooner we realize it and do it, the better for us. And better for the world around us paradoxically.

Steven Pressfield wrote a few books about it. Homer's Odyssey is about coming back to self, becoming yourself. So take that guitar, paint, go reform the education system. Whatever you feel you desire to do, the world needs you to do it. You owe it to yourself. You owe it to us!