A B r i e f L i f e
The Beginning
My journey begins where many do. A feeling of stuckness.
It’s 2017 and I’m halfway through Law School, sick of reading statutes and comparing test scores. I’m only studying law because people say it’s prestigious and earns you money. I have a hunch there’s more to life. So, after some deliberation, I pack my bags, and in April of 2018, I set foot in a city that I believe will unstick me and set me free – London. Everything is about to change but I don’t know it yet.
At first, all goes well. I can taste freedom – I do what I want, when I want. I make my living in a cocktail bar, then a trendy café, then a Japanese restaurant. I am meeting beautiful people – vibrant, arty, clever people. I spend time in Portugal, swimming and eating, and I hug strangers on the street when England make the World Cup semis.
The Darkness
Then, out of nowhere, a darkness starts to brew. One night, I wake at 3 am, sweating and tense. I’m worrying about… death. Not necessarily my death, but death itself. What’s the point, if all of this ends? Why be here, if all that’s good is temporary? Why on earth is there something instead of nothing?
After all my years in rigid academic environments, I managed to break free and am finally saying hello to life. Part of the deal, it seems, is I have to say hello to death, too.
Things get darker and darker before they don’t. More sleepless evenings, more paralysis at 3 am. The darkness descends onto daytime. One morning I sit on a bench by the canal, looking at a friend under the rare blue sky, and I am possessed by the thought: Oh god. One day, all of this will be gone.
At this point, I am disturbed. My search begins.
The Search
I find yoga, I find meditation. I devote myself to these practices. Miraculously, they alleviate some of the pain. I go to Bali to train as a yoga teacher. When I return to Sydney, I spend the next three years in therapy working on my existential angst. Its severity waxes and wanes, and then, it settles.
But not for long. It’s now August 2022, and it’s the second time I will feel the intensity of the stuckness. When the darkness returns this time, I’m not overwhelmed by the beauty of travel but the harshness of work. I’m a new lawyer, having pushed myself through the rest of Law School, and I’m crying in the bathrooms. What’s running through my head: I have to do this job. I can’t let my boss or colleagues down. I can’t let my parents down.
Later, to cope, I take a few days off work. One afternoon during this time, in a state of spiritual inquiry (a process called The Work, by Byron Katie), and supported by people more awake than me, I realise on a deep, subconscious level:
I don’t have to do what I don’t want to do, just to please others.
I realise, then, that I am hoarding a whole stack of beliefs about what I should or shouldn’t do, and that they are in the way of my freedom. Although the fruits of my initial search, yoga and meditation, help, they only go so far until I am also willing to confront and challenge my belief system about what is allowed and what isn’t.
The Transformation
With a little bit of courage and a big lot of fear, I quit my job, move out of my Potts Point apartment, and drift from the people I had surrounded myself with. I feel guilt and I feel shame. Who am I without my achievements? I struggle with knowing I have disappointed my parents, colleagues, and, on some level, society. I wait quietly for a path that speaks to my soul.
In time, it comes, and I travel to the spiritual centre that is Ubud, Bali. For two months, in the tranquil solitude of my bungalow, I learn to listen to life without the noise of the culture that raised me. I notice what is true when no one asks anything of me, and I ask nothing of myself. I begin to accept parts of myself, and begin to derive worth from the inside, not the outside.
The Journey Continues
Since then, I’ve been tending to my heart and spirit. I feel each feeling. I observe my reactions. I question my beliefs with tenderness and patience. Beliefs like ‘I’m not good enough’, ‘I’m not attractive enough’, ‘I won’t be okay’, ‘People need to like me’, ‘The key to my happiness lies outside myself’.
And so, the journey continues. My fear of death hasn’t vanished, but my question has changed. Instead of ‘What is the point of life?’ I’m asking ‘How shall I live my life?’
Part of living involves teaching yoga and sharing meditation, helping others come back to their true selves, just as I have been doing, on this brief journey, from stuckness to freedom.
