August Days: metanoia.

A month ago I shared some personal story about sophrosyne (link is here).

The post was basically about my honest introspective action that I did in an attempt to find answers about my true self, about who I really am, who I really want to be, and what I truly need in my life to reach my true happiness. In other words, understanding myself deeper.

The only reason why I did that was because I was fed up of feeling so empty and lost inside. I was very far away from being happy even when everything seemed to be alright in other people's eyes.

Now, after one month of soul-searching and focusing solely on my self (putting myself back to the point zero), I think I've finally found some answers.

I can say that I might finally reached my sophrosyne at this point. Only after I regained self-understanding (which I once had before), I soon became clearer that the shifting life purpose has been the cause to why I felt so miserable this few years.

See, "live life to the fullest" is the motto I strongly follow in my life.

Living life to the fullest in my own term is not only to go all out in exploring the outside world.. But more on exploring, exposing and maximising yourself and the talents you have.

To do something you really love based on your talents which can results in something big and meaningful to yourself and to others.

In other words, be the best you can be, create something big, positively changing and inspiring using up your talents and make the best out of it. So eventually when we leave this world, people will remember who we are by what we have created or done.

I had that mindset since I was still in school.

But somewhere along the way in these last 3 years that mindset was slowly blurred out. Adulthood is tricky, and apparently my (then) bf and I were trapped into thinking that the best way to be successful adults is to work and earn a lot of money or other material things.

So that's all what we had been doing. Rather than working on something we truly like, we only worked for anything that could bring us good money. We left our hearts out of it.

Sure we could pay our bills, we could buy things we like, we could travel with that money we earned, but eventually it still got me very unhappy. Because no matter how much we got, there's always something missing, I was never content. I forgot that the intangible needs are way more important than the tangibles. I didn't fulfill my own need to express myself. The need which I described before this paragraph.

Last weekend we went to Jakarta to see a talkshow that was held by a group of amazing young people. They created a community (The Good Travelers) where people can share their travel stories through photographs. The community is still small and it is about something simple, but I can see that it could lead to something big & positive. They are mostly younger than me, but they already started to create something based on their loves. They didn't put the 'money-making' purpose as their priority at this point, but I am sure if they keep doing it, the money & success will surely come after. That is why it is very inspiring.

That moment of realization really slapped me hard. That was the turning point and it was the final trigger for me to get to the next stage in my process of finding myself again, which is metanoia.

It is my phase 2. It means 'the journey changing one's mind, heart, self or way of life'. And in my case, I need to change back to my old-self, decontaminate my mind from all the wrong thoughts and restore the mindset I once had when I was younger, just like those folks.

Wish me luck and I do hope to encounter many more life-changing experiences along the journey.