Once upon a time, there was a boy. Just an ordinary boy, or at least, he thought he was completely ordinary. Nothing too much, nothing too little. He played sports, but he wasn’t one of those kids everyone “knew” would make it. It was clear he had a certain potential; the physical predispositions, coordination, and motor skills were there. Yet, despite this, he didn’t fall into the category of a “teenage star” by any means.
The Right Path
He had some virtues he liked about himself and some flaws he didn’t. His childhood was perfectly fine, nothing special, with conditions similar to most of his friends. He had plenty of friends; some of them were also athletes, some were true friends and stayed that way, and some he outgrew because they turned out to be false.
The problem with this boy was that he didn’t have a clear path as to why he was doing what he was doing. However, he clearly believed that a path existed. Even more clearly, he believed there had to be a right path. He even believed that perhaps only one right path existed. But how do you find that right path, and even more, how can you be sure that it is truly the one?
And so the boy grew, trained in his sport, and surprisingly, became a bit older. He followed what his heart told him, tried to work on his flaws, correct his shortcomings, and be better, but he still hadn’t found his path—or at least, so he thought. Somewhere along the way, he also allowed others to shape his path little by little. He let everyone, with their comments and their own realities, form his reality; he allowed them to shape his image of himself.
Discovering Purpose
The boy grew a little bigger and realized he didn’t like that. And more importantly, he realized what he did like, and he realized what he wanted. He liked choosing his own perspective, pushing forward, training, working, getting tired, and grasping for things with his heart. He liked surrounding himself with people who simply and genuinely believed in him. Formulated this way, it worked for him as a young athlete. Until a certain moment.
At that moment, he realized he had found genuine interest, will, desire, strength, support, perseverance, a readiness for sacrifice and hard work, and love. Yet, having all of this, he realized there needed to be something else to connect these different elements into a whole.
With that, the path of why revealed itself to him. The boy—who by now wasn’t really a boy anymore—realized that the glue he was looking for was his very own values. He got to know himself and found commitment to his sport, self-sacrifice, satisfaction when things went well, and room for improvement when things went poorly. Most importantly of all, he discovered his own, now grand enough, why I live what I do. His why soon became the answer to any of his hows.
And he realized that his entire life, he had been searching for his path of why somewhere outside of himself, out there, in others… while all that time, his Why had been waiting for him inside. He also realized that the goal isn’t as important as the journey, and on that journey, he realized he wanted to live in harmony with his Why
