by Joel K. Epps
Have you ever felt lost, literally or figuratively? Of course you have. You know that feeling of “I don’t know where I am” and even worse, “I don’t know how to get where I’m going”, and even worse still “I don’t know where I’m going”. We’ve all been there at one time or another. The funny thing is, it doesn’t matter whether it’s a figurative lost or a literal lost, the feeling is more or less the same; empty and desperate.
I spent my childhood and most of my young adult life feeling lost figuratively. Growing up the product of a broken home, I struggled with identity and fitting into a social environment that said everything about me was outside the norm and less than ideal. Fortunately, I found some solace in playing music and identification with the 70’s counter-culture. But my sense of being lost persisted. At the time I didn’t even know it was “lost” that I was feeling. I just knew that something was wrong with the world as I perceived it so I embarked on a journey, literally and figuratively, to figure it out. I travelled half way around the world to Europe, the Middle East and Africa. I read the holy books of the major religions; the Bible, Koran, Bhagavad Gita and countless books on metaphysics and mysticism.
By the time I was 30 years old I had learned a lot and its safe to say my mind was nearly blown apart from too much information. But I started getting glimpses of inspiration and “enlightenment”, however nothing like what I’d read was possible from people like Siri Ramakrishna who, it is said would go into convulsive fits from the ecstasy he felt from being attuned to the divine. However, since time waits for no one my search for the answer to my “lostness” had to take a back seat to my responsibility of providing for my growing family. Having a family was the perfect diversion because it gave my life purpose and fulfilled in me a place where I belonged. So it’s safe to say that I created a place to be so that I was no longer lost. (This is an important concept to this article so stay with me; the main point is coming)
The lack of feeling lost lasted the better part of 25 years until my kids started becoming adults and leaving home to pursue their own lives. And as if on cue my world started falling apart. In the middle of my mid-life crisis I can remember crying like a baby to my wife and telling her I was lost until I met her. It was the first time I had actually said the words, “I was lost”.
You see, we all feel a little out of place or lost to one degree or another because we’re all a little different. No matter how much a part of your family, community, society, race or religion we feel, there’s always a part of us that feels separate from all of it. Many of us are raised to feel guilt for being different or thinking differently from others in our “group” (pick any of the aforementioned). We grow up being ashamed of our uniqueness or even worse using our uniqueness as a weapon against others to compensate for our guilt of being different. But the fact is, it is our uniqueness that gives us power to create our lives in such a way that best serves us. It wasn’t until I fully understood this that I was comfortable writing about it even though I have been drawing upon this power all of my life (remember I “created” a family and before that I created the opportunity to travel to distant lands); in fact we all do. The problem is that most of us (myself included) go through life not understanding that our uniqueness is where our power comes from and consequently we don’t take full responsibility for creating our happiness and manifesting our dreams. We use the proverbial, “it was or wasn’t meant to be” statement to disavow ownership or responsibility for making the events in our lives happen.
So I say, if you want to be happy and fulfilled dare to be yourself unapologetically. This is not the cliché “be yourself, do your own thing and to hell with what anybody thinks or how you affect others”. What I’m talking about is creating your reality literally by taking responsibility for being the only you that exists and leveraging that, understanding that this is where your divine power finds expression and creativity on a grand scale. And with that power comes the responsibility to be considerate of the impact your actions have on others. The Universe is standing by waiting to answer your unique call so dare to be you!
